Biohacking Too Close to the Sun?

Phillip: We're kicking off at eTail. But today, we're bringing ZIRPY back.

Brian: Bringing ZIRPY back. This is Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon. Heck yes, it is.

Phillip: You're like, "Ha yeah." "Yeah." You won something already. You've been here for five minutes.

Brian: Five minutes. And look at this.

Phillip: And you won the greatest...

Brian: Content about these later.

Phillip: It's gotta be the greatest thing I've I've seen.

Brian: This is big giveaway. This is a mind... This is brain tracking headphones.

Phillip: Okay. I'm bringing this over here on my... So this is a Master and Dynamic. I tried to steal a set of these off the JetBlue Mint Cabin one time. Dude, they know if they gave them to you. They keep track of these.

Brian: Oh, they do.

Phillip: Master and Dynamic. That's a great brand.

Brian: By the way. Way. Very good way.

Phillip: Thank you, Taboola.

Brian: Yeah. Taboola?

Phillip: I think it was Taboola. Taboola? Me? Yeah. One second. No. Not Tabula. Tabula. Shit. Webula.

Brian: Webula. Thank you. Webula gave it to me.

Phillip: Well, there's two shout outs.

Brian: Woah. Tabula and Webula. No. Webbula gave it to me. Save zombie emails for the Apocalypse.

Phillip: That's great. Okay. Well, there we give him the shout out.

Brian: Give him the shout out.

Phillip: I'm gonna do my weekly, or sort of my roundup of the best swag. So the best swag. I'm going to do that. That'll be on all of our social channels. So subscribe on, like, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. We're here at the JW Marriott, so it's gonna be a little bit of a shorter episode. But we do wanna catch up on some news because some stuff is happening in the world. We are kicking off a new series, Hundred Days of the Commerce Department. Mr Howard Lutnick, the new Commerce Secretary was sworn in, not once, but twice as it seemed.

Brian: Good measure.

Phillip: Twice for good measure. He was sworn in once officially after the senate confirmed him as our next Commerce Secretary with his family in attendance. Also, he appointed his 20-something-year-old sons to now run Cantor Fitzgerald. That's definitely going to go well and smoothly, I'm sure.

Brian: Is this Succession? {laughter}

Phillip: Very Succession of him. So that's gonna go really well, I'm sure. But then I think they had, like, sort of a ceremonial reinduction, that President Trump performed. So if he didn't get the Treasury Secretary job that he wanted, Mr Lutnick got at least two.

Brian: Commerce is more fun, dude. You're gonna have better time.

Phillip: That's true. And so there's that happening. Also, so we're kicking off a new series at Future Commerce called The First Hundred Days, and we're going to explain a little bit about what the job of the Commerce Department does. So we'll be checking in a little bit on that.

Brian: Expanding responsibilities.

Phillip: Not the least of which is the new Canadian border czar responsibilities. We'll link up my take on that is that, I guess, he's the fentanyl czar at the border now?

Brian: No. Mountie up. I think we already made this joke on the website.

Phillip: We did. That was the YouTube short. We'll link that in the video show notes below. Our YouTube is blowing up. So if you're not subscribed, you should check that out.

Brian: Shorts are fun. Shout out to our video producer, JT.

Phillip: Yeah. And the whole team is really doing a great job there. But if you want a little bit more than what you get here, we do put our newsletter out twice a week and an Insider's essay once a week. Go subscribe at futurecommerce.com where you can get more of this little bit.

Brian: So funny. Was talking to somebody the other day who was like, "I get your newsletter every week, and I didn't realize you had a podcast." And I was like, "We post about it every Monday. Just double check the Monday email." But for all of you listeners who are like, "I didn't know they had an email newsletter." You should know and you should subscribe at futurecommerce.com/subscribe.

Phillip: Yeah. So a couple of items that appeared in the newsletter this past week, I thought we should cover. Kim Kardashian is partnered with Nike.

Brian: Yep.

Phillip: For Nike SKIMS. So I would like to cover that here today. And then They're here at eTail. Which is, uh, I always think it's really wild how brands that make these really important announcements, you'll have to forgive all this background noise, We're outside, which is actually better than being inside, to be honest with you.

Brian: They're mowing the golf course right there.

Phillip: They are. We're literally mowing the golf course. Brands who make these announcements are able to pull off last minute keynote panels, of which I'm participating on one.

Brian: You are in well, you're in three keynote panels. Or three keynote sessions.

Phillip: We'll take that in stride here as we do our eTail wrap up video, I guess, next week.

Brian: Yep.

Phillip: And then, so I wanna talk a little bit about Nike SKIMS. And then I want to talk about this wild story called the Los Angeles Project, which is a new project that is a genetic engineering project based out of Austin, Texas, where they are trying to create literal unicorns. Have you seen this?

Brian: Yeah. I think I was the one that found that story. It is wild and it's reminiscent of what was it called? Was it Gigantic or something that created the Mammoth?

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: They're still working on it? Colossal. Colossal was the name of that one.

Phillip: Those two words are interchangeable as far as I'm concerned.

Brian: {laughter}

Phillip: So I do wanna talk about those two stories, I think. And then we have a new segment that we have unveiled called Heroes and Villains.

Brian: Save it for the end. Don't give it away.

Phillip: Okay. So we'll bring that at the end of the show. But before we get there, I wanna remind everybody that we have our brand new book. It's called Lore, by Future Commerce. And Lore is asking the bold question, "Do you write the story or is it already written?" And this beautiful 280 page book, which we will throw up on the screen because I don't have it in front of me right now. Beautiful 280 page tome is available from Future Commerce Press. You can get it right now at shop.futurecommerce.com or futurecommerce.com/lore. That's the link I want you to go to.

Brian: If you like to read physical books, this is the book for you.

Phillip: Yeah. And this is unlike anything that you've ever seen from Future Commerce. It is hardcover bound, and it's gorgeous foil pressed debossed on the cover. And it's 14 of our closest, most brilliant friends who have come together to really think and ponder on what the future of commerce looks like and the stories that we tell as brands and the stories that customers impose on us, and all of the lore that goes into the myth making and the legends in our industry. If you are at all interested in that, this is definitely gonna be worth your while. Definitely worth a place on your coffee table for the next few years. Lore, $75 at futurecommerce.com/lore. Grab that right now. There's only a few copies left of this first run, and the next run won't ship until April. So get it like right now. And also, big announcement, we're gonna be at Shoptalk.

Brian: Oh, are we ever? In fact, we have a big party you can go sign up for right now.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: So go to our events page and sign up for the Shoptalk event that we're doing with Adobe. Cannot wait.

Phillip: Yeah. Shoptalk is one of the biggest events in the whole industry, and we are going to be there in force. The Future Commerce team is presenting for the very first time, and we're doing our very first after party. So we'll be both on the show floor activating the Lore book launch, and then we'll also be throwing our very first after party.

Brian: Plus a coffee lounge.

Phillip: All of those things are available info at futurecommerce.com, and click on the events page. Okay. Let's talk about Nike SKIMS. This was an unexpected announcement. And I think that for those who are not aware, I'm just going to read a little bit from what I wrote here in The Senses. Kim Kardashian announces the groundbreaking Nike Skimps project. It's a new women's brand that launches in spring of 2025, which is right now, which promises performance wear that sculpts while you sweat, the mash up marries Nike's technical prowess with SKIMS body conscious design philosophy. And that means that these are two brands coming together. My big hot take here is that rather than going public, SKIMS is coming to the rescue of a brand like Nike that seems to be in a slump. Why would they do that, Brian?

Brian: I think there's a lot of reasons why. Well, first of all, this is a no brainer move for SKIMS. Nike's got such a huge audience and so much trust and distribution at the highest level and the brand is still strong. You say they're in a slump, and yes, they are kind of in a little bit of a cultural slump. That might be, you know, lot of the athletic brands right now though, and a brand like SKIMS that does cheap wear and sculpting and body sculpting, that's actually on the way up. I think SKIMS has a huge opportunity to dominate the market right now with Lulu and Aloe, maybe starting to lose a little bit of favor. It seems like SKIMS has started to really take a dominant position, especially as they've collapsed so heavily with others. This just seems a native part of their strategy to me. And actually very endemic to the way that they do business. And so, I like the move. I think it's really smart. But I think Nike's smart to align with them. And also, there's a very technical side for this as well, which Nike, I think, will appreciate adding sort of the sculpt while you sweat tagline was actually really smart because it feels like it's new. Feels like it's a new opportunity.

Phillip: I agree. It looks like the market really reacts to things like this. Two big reaction moves. Intraday trading, Nike's shares jumped 6.2% on the announcement. So it looks like Wall Street recognizes that this is something more than just a collab. It's a full fledged, you know, brand launch and this is two brands coming together for something new. Lululemon stock took a 3% hit on the announcement. And that looks like a big reaction move as well. What do you think about this potential of is there a challenge around like a bifurcation of the brand where people might misperceive as SKIMS as having been acquired? Is there a potential of some kind of brand confusion?

Brian: I don't think so. Everybody knows that SKIMS is Kim K's brand, and so she has so much recognition that the potential mix up of an acquisition doesn't seem likely, at least right now. The people that are tuned in to SKIMS as a brand are tuned in tuned in to Kim Kardashian and the way that she's doing her business. So I don't think there's any confusion opportunities.

Phillip: Obviously, I'm not the target demo. I do remember when they launched men's. It was in coordination with...

Brian: NBA.

Phillip: Right. With the NBA. Strangely enough, the NBA has probably never been at its least cultural relevance than is at this moment. I'm not saying that those two things are going sort of hand in hand, but I wouldn't say that SKIMS has had a... I don't know their internals, and I don't know that they've published them, but it doesn't look like SKIMS is positioning men's as a big portion of this launch. So I can't say that SKIMS has really leaned into men's as a huge part of their strategy. I'm reading in into a lot of things here.

Brian: For sure. Right. I mean, it seems like a tough one anyway. I know Lulu did a really good job of making that jump.

Brian: Of course.

Phillip: But I think that...

Phillip: And Fabletics as well. Fabletics was really Kevin Hart and some of their partnerships. It looks like a lot of the other brands have made the leap to men's. SKIMS, it doesn't seem...

Brian: Seems a little bit tougher.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: Just given the founder, I think.

Phillip: Yeah. Sure.

Brian: It's not really like as male centric. At least for a clothing brand.

Phillip: Right. Think about some of the other Nike partnerships. You know, Nike, last year moved into a weightlifting vertical. I think it was literally Nike Strength.

Brian: Nice.

Phillip: Dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, plates. That was, as with all of the DTC crowd that seemed to be like sort of universally praised. This feels a little bit like that. I wonder how long this really lasts and reverberates in the culture. But this is, you know, obviously much bigger because SKIMS is huge. When I went to Selfridges in London, half of an entire floor of Selfridges, I'm talking like 5,000 square foot is dedicated to SKIMS.

Brian: That is wild.

Phillip: It is an unbelievable size of an apple. It's larger than any other brand activation. It's on the scale of like a Gucci. Right? So we're talking like giant. My mic is going crazy here. So it's a giant activation and that should tell you, you know, the size and scale of the cultural awareness of something like a SKIMS, even in The UK.

Brian: It's crazy to me how fast they've scaled. And that just speaks to the strength of Kim K's personal brands. And what they've done with other brands in the past, Good American and some of the others. And they're good business people, those Kardashians. I know it's been said a million times. The strength of Nike, being able to pull something like this, I did not see this coming. Did you see this coming?

Phillip: No. I don't know that anyone could say that they saw this coming but this strategy, it it feels... I'm gonna be cynical for one second?

Brian: Yeah. Do it.

Phillip: This is one of those things that feels like a collab that they're trying to say isn't a collab.

Brian: What are they trying to say it is?

Phillip: Well, they're saying it's a brand new brand.

Brian: Interesting.

Phillip: Do you see what I'm saying? Like, "Oh, it's a brand new brand. This is a new brand."

Brian: Nike x SKIMS.

Phillip: Yeah. This is not an X. This is not a collab. This is not a short-lived thing, this is a new brand. And the cynical part of me wants to say that like, in a year, we won't be talking about this.

Brian: The other part of me is like, this is just a step towards acquisition. This is how Nike finds its way into a totally new set of users or customers and yeah, I don't know. If you were Kim, would you exit or keep trying to push on this? I think I would probably exit but, you know...

Phillip: The sportswear design piece, in the market expansion strategy, I was looking at some of the other pieces that have been written already. The shapewear aspect to this around like the, if you look at how SKIMS has been designed in the past, a lot of the Nike activewear has really been around... There's a look to it. It's definitely rooted in a specific sort of aesthetic that looks a lot more like track wear or more lounge wear. A lot of Nike's active wear doesn't necessarily look or perform like any of the other active wear that you've seen before. I think about like my visit to their flagship store in New York and a lot of their activewear, they're not even trying to pull off the same sort of like fabric platforms that Lululemon have done in the past few years. It's more like almost streetwear send ups of large, bulky, loose fitting, almost like their acronym collabs. They were really going after a streetwear aesthetic. This feels like a 180 degree reversal.

Brian: It feels like they... It expands for them. It's just an expansion. There's really no down side for Nike in this. That's how I feel.

Phillip: For sure.

Brian: There's danger for SKIMS, but Nike can step into this in a like a very test the waters way and not have any of the risks. If SKIMS starts to tank, it's like, "Oh, Nike moves on. Whatever." They're like, "Wow, another one bites the dust.

Phillip: A little perusal on Perplexity, which is one of our favorite platforms to use for this kind of a search is, you know, Nike has a lot of performance fabric platforms like DryFit.  don't know that SKIMS has its own sort of performance fabric technology that's sort of like patented platforms technologies. It does have its own platforms, but I think it's sort of the same types of fabric platforms that a lot of others use.

Brian: Yeah.

Phillip: So this might be, you know, access to other types of performance fabric platforms that maybe you're just not used to seeing. I don't know. That might be reaching a bit. Nike probably also lacks these types of size inclusive strategies that SKIMS has gone after in the past. These are all hey, maybe it's reaching a little bit, but I like the sort of mode of thinking of what are the possibilities in this type of a...

Brian: Yeah. I only see upside for Nike.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: SKIMS on the other hand, the Nike partnership's also upside for them. Only upside for them. So overall, good move by both companies.

Phillip: One thing that I love about... I don't know if you've ever shopped on SKIMS. Fabletics has a really similar sort of an approach.

Brian: I've gone on Fabletics, but SKIMS has not been my go to.

Phillip: So a lot of these companies have a member approach. Fabletics, I think, pioneered this where, you know, a lot of these things tend to work in a buy more, save more or like a subscription model.

Brian: Yeah. They were early to that.

Phillip: Yeah. For sure. SKIMS definitely works big on like a bundle sort of a strategy. These are not things that I think Nike is typically in the modality of shopping through. Nike has I think, a world class rewards and also drop model platform. These are two things that we might see innovation coming together on those two modes of purchasing. One thing I'd love to see is Fabletics... This is like neither of these companies do it, but Fabletics has the ability to swap the model that you're viewing while you're shopping. So for size inclusivity and sort of like body representation. So that would be really cool to see from either of these companies.

Brian: Do they use Doji? Just kidding.

Phillip: No. But that would be cool to see.

Brian: You know, I was looking at an EriLane ad just the other day...

Phillip: Doji, by the way, for those who aren't familiar, you wanna explain?

Brian: Oh, Doji is a virtual try on, deep fake sort of thing.

Phillip: Yeah.

Brian: And it's it's kinda if you haven't seen it, it's all over social. People are, like, trying on different clothes. And Phillip got a total glow up, maybe too much of a glow up. {laughter}

Phillip: {laughter} More like a total racial makeover. We'll link that up. It's called, "I Tried Doji and it Turned Me Into a Black Man." That was the name of the title.

Brian: Everlane's ads feel like they're Doji-generated. And it feels like more and more ads are basically just mocked up and they have been for years and years. In fact, even back when we first started Future Commerce nine years ago, people were using technologies to mock up different pieces of clothing on their product retail indicates. Even the most forward thinking retailers and brands were creating solutions for their models and it like basically data creations for product using tools like this.

Phillip: Yeah. I'm just thinking about all of the AI that we're gonna have to use to clean up this audio because this is like when we sat down, there were no leaf blowers at all. This is hilarious right now. Uh, Alright. Let's move off. I didn't think we could do

Brian: You know? Yeah. Well, yeah. Speaking of new creation of coming together...

Phillip: What a segue.

Brian: Coming together of brands and creating something new. It seems like we're gonna see the mashup of DNA to create new creatures of all sorts, mythical beings.

Phillip: Alright. So this one, this is wild. I will read the headline from wired.com, "Your Next Pet Could Be a Glowing Rabbit." This is written by Emily Mullen, in the science column, published on 02/19/2025. "Biohacker, Josie Zayner's new company, the Los Angeles Project, is using gene editing to create a new generation of pets. Los Angeles Project launches with an audacious mission to create a new kingdom of life, promising designer creatures that would make..." Well, this is my editorialization, that would make Hieronymus Bosch blush. And then I quoted her from her Twitter post, "We are bringing life itself under human design, says Co-Founder Josie Zayner. Unicorns, dragons, and creatures beyond imagination, if evolution won't make them, we will."

Brian: "See the dinosaurs..." {southern US accent}

Phillip: "The dinosaurs..." {souther US accent) My take? If they can make dragons, can they also fix the final season of Game of Thrones?

Brian: We could actually use live dragons. This actually makes a lot of sense. They could fund this simply from a content creation perspective. The first movie studio that gets the dragons, wins.

Phillip: That's true. They're really beginning, just for those who aren't familiar, or haven't read the Wired magazine article, Josie Zayner has been experimenting on herself publicly with CRISPR since 2017, through livestreams.

Brian: Did you see Orphan Black?

Phillip: I did not.

Brian: Oh, man. We're treading into that territory right now.

Phillip: Okay. So LAP, the Los Angeles Project, is her grown up version of what she's been doing on herself since, you know, the early days of her performance art...

Brian: Does she have a tail?

Phillip: I am unaware of her having or not having a tail, I should say. In 2017, during a conference in San Francisco, she livestreamed herself publicly injecting herself with a gene editing tool, CRISPR. But she said she wants to help humans genetically modify themselves. And she's also given herself a fecal transplant, a DIY COVID vaccine...

Brian: Was it Catherine the great that like inoculated herself?

Phillip: This is at the very forefront of a series of the type of projects that I think a lot of people would find grotesque and probably unfundable.

Brian: If I if I'm honest, I think on my phone, I can.

Phillip: Uh, one of the yeah. I'm probably me too. One of the practical uses that Zayner and her Co-Founder suggest is modifying the embryos of rabbits to create sort of designer pets like glowing rabbits.

Brian: Glowing rabbits, I can kinda get behind. But that... If I can make my dog glow in the dark, that would help me actually immensely.

Phillip: Why? Do you lose your dog a lot?

Brian: No. Well, you know, I live out on a little bit of property, and when I let her go potty at night, it's like, pretty young. Wanna be able to where is he?

Phillip: I'm sure that there is other ways to solve that problem without gene editing your dog.

Brian: Probably. I would imagine I could probably just put a glow collar on him or something.

Phillip: According to... You could do that. This is apparently something that's already existed. Again, I'm citing the Wired article. We can link this all up in the YouTube description, but this has been done in fish already. So there is a GFP protein, which causes this sort of bioluminescence. And other animals have already been bioengineered to have this, fish in particular. So there is a product called Glowfish, which has a recombinant DNA technology that was developed by a company called Yorktown Technologies, which sold that brand for $50,000,000 in 2017.

Brian: So can you inject your fish with this after they are grown up and then it changes them? Or

Phillip: Yeah. Do you have to do it like when they're in their embryo? So according to this article, in the embryonic state, you can do this GFP edit in the embryonic state. When you expose the embryos to blue or ultraviolet light, you can observe this change. And then when you express that gene in the gene editing in the embryonic state, but CRISPR allows you to do this at a later development.

Brian: So Joe Z is definitely glow in the dark.

Phillip: There's again, citing the same article, one company, Egenesis, has made pigs with 69 gene edits to make their organs more compatible for human transplants. So there are lots of practical uses, but there's a lot of bioethicists that are talking about, like, frivolous uses, one of which is the Co-Founder of this you Los Angeles Project talking about wanting to make unicorns. Like, you know I mean, this is courses that have horns.

Brian: All technology, whether you say it's frivolous or not frivolous, like, it's the same. But I this is this is always the This is the case. The the permacase. Yes. The permacase. Like, there's always a downside to technology. {laughter}

Phillip: Yeah. You could have two two guys podcasting. There's always a downside to technology. That's the downside is two guys sitting outside of a JW Marriott in Palm Springs podcasting, and that's the living. This is it. We are the downside.

Brian: We are the downside. Yeah.

Phillip: Well...

Brian: Sorry, everybody.

Phillip: So I think the Heroes and Villains...

Brian: We're the Villains. {laughter}

Phillip: Okay. So Hero of the week, Brian Lange. Who's the Hero of the week?

Brian: I'm gonna go with I'll go with Nike. I think Nike is making good moves. So I think they're making smart financial decisions and they're partnering with the right people and it's so surprising that they would partner with SKIMS because it felt like they could be competitive. And instead, they saw them as like help as a frammy and I and I think it's a good identification. So I'll build Nike on Kira. Okay.

Phillip: I'll go with Kim Kardashian. Think they they for ever a hero? For everything that I've ever thought about her, she continues to absolutely blow away every expectation as being the ultimate business person. Man, the business acumen and the savvy and wow. So, yeah, Hero of the week.

Brian: I like it. Nike and Kim.

Phillip: She could have exited multiple times over by now.

Brian: For sure.

Phillip: But she keeps accruing value to herself and I think that that's kind of incredible. Why not just keep writing the... I mean, it's incredible, actually. So, yeah, Hero of the week. Why not? I never thought I'd say Kim K, the Hero of the week, but there you go. Villain of the week, Brian.

Brian: Josie Z. What's better? It's Josie Z. What's I do worry about a future where we're injecting ourselves for CRISPR. And maybe I'm like the guy who was like, "These inoculations are dangerous." Maybe I'm being anti science but I do think editing humanity too much was a little freaky to me. When we start to combine technological with biological, people have done some really heinous things when they when they did not. The Russian two headed dog that lived for thirty minutes or whatever.

Phillip: That's right. {laughter}

Brian: There is a future. I guarantee there's a future where we're doing a lot more editing of humanity and that kind of...

Phillip: I agree with that. I agree with that. So Uh, that's it's Fiction. Call it it. And it's scary. Okay. Here's my Villain. Since you already took the one that's obvious, I'll take the non obvious Villain of the week. I'm gonna say the Villain of the week is the editor at Wired.

Brian: I was hoping you would say that.

Phillip: Who platformed these crazy people.

Brian: Have a Observation as participation.

Phillip: Yeah. It's not Emily Mullen who wrote the story. It's the editor who decided that the title, that the lead should not be that these people are psychopaths. It's "Your next pet could be a glowing rabbit" and "Biohacker's new company is using gene editing to create a new generation of pets." That's the lead?

Brian: That is PR at the highest.

Phillip: That's insane to me.

Brian: Ugh.

Phillip: Wired, you should be ashamed.

Brian: Marshall McLuhan would not be proud of you.

Phillip: That's the the villain of the week for me. Uh, Alright. Well, uh,

Brian: Let's leave it there.

Phillip: Uh, okay. Before we wrap this week, I wanna remind you that we have our coverage from eTail coming and really excited to bring that all to you. It's gonna be great. So make sure to stay tuned. Also, our new book, Lore, you can go get it right now and all things Future Commerce Print at futurecommerce.com/lore. And thank you so much for watching Future Commerce. If it sparked something for you, like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and it helps more people to join in on the conversation. And if you want more Future Commerce in your world, check out our print shop at futurecommerce.com where commerce meets culture and beautifully crafted zines and collectibles. Remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. And we'll see you next time.