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Andy Hunter decided something needed to be done about the endless rise of Amazon in 2018the year that the e-commerce giant surpassed 50% of book sales in the U.S. market. I was concerned at that rate of growth, says founder and CEO of Bookshop.org. Hunter did a back of a napkin projection and figured that by 2025, Amazon would have secured an 80% share of the U.S. market. That worried Hunter, who had long worked in the publishing industry, especially when paired with stats showing half of all independent, local bookshops in the country went out of business at the same time as Amazon became ascendant. I felt very strongly that books are too important to our culture to give complete control of them to a single monopolist-like retailer, says Hunter. The vision was what would become Bookshop.org, which is now launching an e-book initiative, enabling its users to download digital books. But whatever the tech, the mission has been the same: supporting local bookstores by allowing them to keep most, if not all, the revenue from book sales made through the website, while giving them a digital storefront at a time when customers do more and more shopping online. (Bookshop.org makes its money through direct sales, where it gets 20% of a books value; affiliate sales for other companies, where it gets 10%; and advertising from publishers.) Hunter began building the site in mid-2019, and launched it on January 28, 2020, with a small team of four people. At the time, he was working two day jobs, alongside Bookshop.org as a side project. It was a big gamblebut one that paid off. Within the first month, the site sold $50,000 of books. I considered that a success, but we didnt know if it was going to work, he admits. We only had eight months of cash runway before we would run out of money and disappear. While many businesses were negatively impacted by the pandemic, Bookshop.org benefitted from the world moving online. Within the first six weeks of COVID-19, the company onboarded 1,200 bookstores, and fielded interest from the U.K.s Booksellers Associationresulting in the company launching in the U.K. in November 2020, ahead of the holiday season there. We launched right into peak trading season, says Nicole Vanderbilt, a former Etsy executive who led the U.K. arm of Bookshop.org. It was an immediate success. The platform has continued its growth in the five years since, embedding itself into the industry in a way that surprises even Hunter. Global revenue in December 2024 hit $8.6 million, $7.5 million of which was from the United States. Hunter believes its the personalized touch, and the knowledge that each purchase supports independent bookstores, that has helped the company succeed. We arent cheaper than Amazon and were not faster, he says. While the company tries to remain competitive on price and delivery time, it cant possibly compete with Amazons infrastructure or scale. Ultimately, the only reason you would ever buy a book from Bookshop or from one of our stores is because of your values, because you appreciate it culturally, he says. Thats why we’ve succeeded: because there are enough of those people who have shared the values that we have. So far, Bookshop.org has competed with Amazon only on physical book sales. But from today, its taking the fight to the tech giant with e-book sales, too. The company has developed its own e-book platform, accessible through a web browser or downloadable app for Apple and Android, designed to compete with Kindle, allowing shoppers to buy digital versions of their favorite books from independents. It cost us about $2 million and took about nine months longer than we thought it would, says Hunter. That outlay isnt all that significant for big tech firms, but it was for Bookshop.org, the CEO explains. Yet it was a necessary decision to remain competitive. E-books are about 15 to 20% of all books sold, and right now you can’t buy them from your local bookshop, he says, pointing to a European vacation he took with his children last summer where they wanted to read on e-readers, but were forced into big techs grasp to do so. Audiobooks will also soon be released in the U.K. later this year, Hunter saysanother attempt to maintain feature parity with Amazon. The next five years of Bookshop.org will see the company pursue further digital options for customers, Hunter saysattempting to eke further into Amazons market share and to slow its spread as the dominant entity in the market. After all, that was the founding principle that motivated Hunter to set up his company: to stop Amazon reaching that forecast 80% share by 2025. We are eating into it, he says. I know weve eaten into it. But the analogy is that weve stolen a crumb from the giants mouth. Nearly four in five Bookshop.org customers say they used to buy books on Amazon, according to the companys own surveysmeaning theres an untapped market that can be tackled even further.
Category:
E-Commerce
Recently, I saved a major exclusive story from nearly getting killed at the eleventh hour. After developing the communications strategy, writing several versions of a pitch that a broader team of external partners would use over the course of the campaigns phases, and personally intervening when the opportunity was nearly lost after one of the parties involved fumbled, that same party later said to me, “Thanks for your help.”Help.Twenty years in public relations, including over a decade running a successful consultancy, and my strategic leadership was reduced to “helpa word that carries centuries of loaded meaning for Black women in America. It’s a word that seems disproportionately reserved for people of color, regardless of their role, impact, or level of experience.But this wasn’t an isolated incident. I’ve watched a familiar pattern unfold throughout my career: White professionals are dubbed rockstars for meeting basic expectations and praised for their brilliance for sharing a contrarian thought. Meanwhile, when Black and brown professionalsparticularly women of colordemonstrate exceptional results and seemingly do the impossible, we’re thanked for our “help.” Mislabeling leadership as help is a reminder that excellence isnt always enough to rewrite bias, especially for Black leaders, says Jenny Vazquez-Newsum, E.d.D., a leadership strategist, facilitator, and author of the book Untapped Leadership: Harnessing the Power of Underrepresented Leaders. It reinforces a long-standing systemic flaw that devalues the intellectual labor and expertise of Black professionals. Lets be clear about what help actually is. Help is being a fresh pair of eyes to review slides before a colleagues presentation. Help is picking up slack on a project when a teammate is out sick. What I and many other diverse professionals do every day isn’t help; it’s leadership that drives business forward and enables teams to succeed. The language we use matters. When companies frame Black leadership as “help,” they perpetuate a subtle but powerful form of professional diminishment. This framing doesn’t just affect individual recognition; it impacts career advancement, team dynamics, and business success. It reinforces an unconscious hierarchy where certain professionals are seen as leaders by default, while others must constantly prove their leadershiponly to have it minimized by being characterized as a supporting role. Language can be a subtle mirror of our biases, says Vazquez-Newsum. When we diminish Black leadership to help, we prescribe a subordinate narrative to extraordinary contributions. It undercuts expertise even if couched in good intentions or under a veil of gratitude.This systemic undervaluation has significant business implications. According to research from Russell Reynolds Associates, only 29% of Black professionals with 10-20 years of experience report satisfaction with their level of recognition, compared to 47% of their non-Black peers. Similarly, a LinkedIn survey of more than 2,000 Black professionals found that lack of recognition was a primary driver of turnover, with 33% citing it as a reason they considered leaving their jobs.The cost is substantial to businesses: Companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity are 66% less likely to outperform their peers financially, per McKinsey data. When organizations fail to acknowledge Black leadership, they risk losing the very talent that could drive successwith Gallup estimating replacement costs reaching up to 200% of annual salary for leadership positions. The solution isn’t simply swapping wordsit’s fundamentally shifting how corporate America recognizes and values leadership. Companies must create systems that properly attribute individual contributions and build cultures where excellence is recognized, regardless of who demonstrates it. Vazquez-Newsum emphasizes the broader business implications. “Failing to acknowledge leadership where it exists is a business liability. Bias in language creates an unseen barrier in talent pipelines, costing organizations their most innovative thinkers. What some may dismiss as subtlety, others experience as a powerful deterrent, discouraging the very talent and contributions the companies need to thrive.” She says that companies build a communication culture that fully acknowledges the weight of contributions. It should be standard practice to explicitly articulate the scope and significance of a colleague’s contribution and align it with recognized leadership behaviors. Simple gratitude is not equivalent to adequate recognition.” Theres help, and theres business leadership. Its time for companiesand individualsto recognize the difference.
Category:
E-Commerce
It’s hard for a designer to get the world’s attention at fashion week. But a year ago, the Maison Margiela show went viral thanks, in large part, to Pat McGrath’s makeup, which made models’ skin look like it was made of glass. The show was theatrical. Creative director John Galliano conjured a dark, ethereal universe apparently inspired by the Belle Époque of the late 1800s, when women had tightly cinched corsets, and voluminous dresses with padding that accentuated their busts and hips. Models, including Gwendoline Christie (second from right), walk the runway during the Maison Margiela Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week, January 2024. [Photo: Pierre Suu/Getty Images] But the models didn’t look human. They looked like like otherworldly creatures, with pale skin, small lips, flushed cheeks, and a glossy sheen that made the skin look translucent. It began with a conversation with John [Galliano] about the Seine in Paris, under moonlight, McGrath recalls. We envisioned porcelain dolls coming to life, merging ethereal beauty with a sense of wonder. We wanted to create something that had never been seen before. In the days after the show, TikTok and Instagram exploded as people tried to recreate the look using everything from vaseline to oil. McGrath even entered the fray, sharing exactly how she created the look with special effects water-based glue, followed by gel masks. Over the last year, she’s been working on a product that makes it easy to create the look at home. She releases Skin Fetish: Glass 001 Artistry Mask this Thursday exclusively through her brand, Pat McGrath Labs. [Photo: Pat McGrath Labs] McGrath has actually been tinkering with trying to create this makeup for about four years. The final product comes in a tube and consists of ingredients like glycerin, rose-flower water, and allantoin. You apply it across the entire face like a peel-off mask. The key is to ensure that it is applied evenly, and in three or four layers. I like to apply the mask in thin, even layers across clean dry skin with a taper brush with soft bristles, McGrath says. Let it fully dry before adding the next [layer]you can use a hairdryer on a cool setting or a fan to speed things up. Makeup for the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Garage Magazine. [Image: courtesy Pat McGrath Labs] The final look is stunning, much like the models in the Galliano show. But it is a difficult look to pull off every day, since the the mask can crack if you talk or even smile too broadly. But McGrath says that you can customize the product. You can even just put it on certain high points of your face, she says. Once the mask sets, it forms a smooth, peel-off film that reveals hydrated, glowing skin. Yes, the look is dramatic. But McGrath says that’s the whole point. It’s meant to give everybody the opportunity to create a unique look and express themselves in creative new ways. And given the enthusiastic response to the show, McGrath believes that there are may people who would enjoy wearing this look to a party or a date. It’s a love letter to those who embrace bold beauty, she says. It’s about merging runway-level innovation with real-world usability. [Photo: Pat McGrath Labs] In many ways, this product epitomizes McGrath’s entire brand. The British makeup artist first became a fixture in the fashion world in the 1980s, creating looks for designers like Anna Sui and Versace. Then the business world came knocking. Giorgio Armani and later, Procter & Gamble hired her to create cosmetics. In 2015, she launched her own brand, Pat McGrath Labs, which quickly exploded. McGrath says that her brand is designed to bring the secrets of makeup artists to everyday people. She and her team spend a lot of time coming up with formulas that make it quick and easy to create looks that might otherwise take hours backstage. I took a three-hour process and distilled it into an effortless 10-minute process you can do at home to achieve the same look, she says. Importantly, this mask is actually good for your skin. And this is also key to McGrath’s strategy. It expands our focus on skin-first innovation, she says. [We’re] merging skincare benefits with transformative artistry.
Category:
E-Commerce
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