The rise of the curator

Conventional wisdom holds that the influence of the retailer is on an inexorable decline, as the flatness of the web allows every consumer goods company to put out its own shingle, spin up a solid social media presence, and sell direct to consumer.

However, we’ve been seeing an interesting trend that started about 10 years ago. In working with our ecommerce clients and spending quality shopping time with their consumers, we’ve noticed that there’s something new happening: the rise of the ‘curator’, both offline and online.

Curators are retailers that bring their customers a hand-picked, tailored selection of products within a category or group of categories. Rather than trying to sell anything and everything, they provide a limited set of products, selected based upon specific attributes such as lifestyle, product quality, or compatible corporate ethos.

Many times, these curators become name brands in and of themselves - such as Anthropologie or Sephora in the United States - and begin to carry substantial weight in the mind of the consumer. Sephora, for example, carries both name-brand and lesser-known products under one roof. While the underlying brand of the products themselves may not be well-known or advertised, the fact that the retailer has chosen the brand instantly confers upon it a level of credibility - and can drive significant sales volume in a short period of time.

Given the increasing noise on the web and the ever-expanding circus of products available at a whim and a click - combined with consumers’ lack of desire to take the time to sift through the long tail - we foresee strong growth in the business of curation as the gateway to products, both on the web and in the physical world.