Today’s post is a set of related questions for all of you.

Fred Wilson has a post up on his blog today called, The Jiu-Jitsu Move. It’s about how people often dismiss new technologies, market entrants, and/or consumer behaviours as silly; whereas the real power move is to embrace and leverage them. That’s what he is calling the jiu-jitsu move.

He gives a few examples, but for obvious reasons this one stood out to me:

I spent the day yesterday at a real estate industry event and talked to a lot of agents about the fact that their clients are often more informed than they are these days. I encouraged them to embrace that fact and use it to their advantage and not fear it. It is hard when you have grown up in an industry when your advantage was information and you no longer have that working for you.

For all the agents (and real estate consumers) who read this blog, I am curious if you agree with the above. Are consumers increasingly more informed than agents? I am sure that many of you will disagree. But if things are really changing, what should the jiu-jitsu move be?

Bloomberg recently published this interesting piece talking about the death of clothing. The reasons are as follows: we’re spending more on experiences, as well as technology (tech spending surpassed apparel spending in 2010); casual dress in the workplace has become more widely accepted; fast fashion companies like H&M and Zara are putting downward pressure on prices; and social media influencers – instead of big companies – are now the ones showing us what to buy and wear.

Here is a graph from the article comparing experiences, apparel, and technology expenditures: 

The first thing I noticed is that experiences, while still increasing, haven’t really spiked since 1977, even though everybody seems to be talking about how social media-fueled Millennials are all about experiences. I was also surprised to see that the share of US employers that allow casual dress every day seems to be closing in on 50%. (Informal survey for the comments and for Twitter: Do you wear casual clothes to work? I’m a no.)

But perhaps the biggest contributors to this decline are fast fashion and low-cost manufacturing. Stanley Pignal – South Asia business and finance correspondent for the Economist – pointed out on Twitter that since 1982 inflation in US apparel was only 123% compared to 248% for overall CPI. So maybe a lot of the above reasoning is just a distraction.

Today’s post is a set of related questions for all of you.

Fred Wilson has a post up on his blog today called, The Jiu-Jitsu Move. It’s about how people often dismiss new technologies, market entrants, and/or consumer behaviours as silly; whereas the real power move is to embrace and leverage them. That’s what he is calling the jiu-jitsu move.

He gives a few examples, but for obvious reasons this one stood out to me:

I spent the day yesterday at a real estate industry event and talked to a lot of agents about the fact that their clients are often more informed than they are these days. I encouraged them to embrace that fact and use it to their advantage and not fear it. It is hard when you have grown up in an industry when your advantage was information and you no longer have that working for you.

For all the agents (and real estate consumers) who read this blog, I am curious if you agree with the above. Are consumers increasingly more informed than agents? I am sure that many of you will disagree. But if things are really changing, what should the jiu-jitsu move be?

Bloomberg recently published this interesting piece talking about the death of clothing. The reasons are as follows: we’re spending more on experiences, as well as technology (tech spending surpassed apparel spending in 2010); casual dress in the workplace has become more widely accepted; fast fashion companies like H&M and Zara are putting downward pressure on prices; and social media influencers – instead of big companies – are now the ones showing us what to buy and wear.

Here is a graph from the article comparing experiences, apparel, and technology expenditures: 

The first thing I noticed is that experiences, while still increasing, haven’t really spiked since 1977, even though everybody seems to be talking about how social media-fueled Millennials are all about experiences. I was also surprised to see that the share of US employers that allow casual dress every day seems to be closing in on 50%. (Informal survey for the comments and for Twitter: Do you wear casual clothes to work? I’m a no.)

But perhaps the biggest contributors to this decline are fast fashion and low-cost manufacturing. Stanley Pignal – South Asia business and finance correspondent for the Economist – pointed out on Twitter that since 1982 inflation in US apparel was only 123% compared to 248% for overall CPI. So maybe a lot of the above reasoning is just a distraction.