My focus is building great companies and growing the industry through innovation and investing in a v-commerce model that best services the real-time expectations of customers with more unique products readily available across retail channels.
INTRODUCING VERTICAL COMMERCE (V-COMMERCE)
To compete with the large marketplaces, Michael Rubin believes in a winning model he calls v-commerce. V-commerce means selling unique, specialized and differentiated merchandise that cannot be commoditized by the Internet. This model is the key to success for companies such as Fanatics, Lululemon, and Bonobos, just to name a few. It allows online retailers to control their destiny by owning their merchandise, marketing it and selling it directly to consumers.
V-commerce helped Fanatics become one the only highly-scaled, vertical e-commerce companies. The model allows for incredible speed to market, benefiting not only customers but the fans that shop with the company’s retailers and partners. It also provides the opportunity for Fanatics to continue to establish strategic partnerships and deals that drive industry growth. It is thanks to the v-commerce model that the company has grown by 39% (compound annual growth rate) since 2002.
