The Future of Shopping podcast: Why the future of the internet is back to basics

Vogue Business is delighted to announce the launch of our latest podcast series, The Future of Shopping, presented by Worldpay. This podcast is part of our new editorial package, The Future of Shopping, in which we predict how the retail landscape will be shaped over the next decade. Click here to read more.

Vogue Business is delighted to announce the launch of our latest podcast series: The Future of Shopping. The Future of Shopping podcast investigates what the new era of shopping will look like, presented by Worldpay.

In each episode, Vogue Business editors will unpack what comes next for e-commerce, social commerce and Web3, what will happen to malls and high streets, and how consumers will shop in the future.

In the fourth episode, we discuss the key technologies and opportunities shaping the future of shopping on the internet, looking at how the first two generations of e-commerce have since transitioned into a third era, now known as Web3. While the industry has come a long way from dial-up connections and grainy imagery, some of the original challenges remain.

Vogue Business’s senior innovation editor Maghan McDowell is joined by Carol Hilsum, who has spent two decades in fashion e-commerce, including Topshop, Net-a-Porter and Farfetch, where she led corporate ventures and oversaw investments in over 40 startups at the intersection of fashion and tech. Now a co-founder of consultancy StudioThree, Hilsum advises startups and investors on the technologies and themes most important to the industry.

In this episode, she shared her predictions for the future and her perspectives on artificial intelligence, Web3 and spatial computing, among other hot topics. With first-person anecdotes from the early days of e-commerce — including a professor who helped build Net-a-Porter’s first personalisation tool, and why the retail sales floor was her favourite job yet — Hilsum highlights how far the industry has come, and the problems that remain. She also reveals her top advice for startups today, with unfiltered thoughts on which buzzwords should be left by the wayside.