Offcuts

Hosted by Tim Richardson

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184

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Jun 2026

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About the show

Offcuts is a podcast and newsletter about AI and commerce. It is read and listened to by people at Stripe, Shopify, Dr. Martens, Loewe, H&M, Mercedes-AMG F1 and hundreds of other brands shaping ecommerce. Written and recorded by practitioners, for the people running consumer brands. We cover what is actually changing in the AI and commerce landscape, what it means for the way brands grow, and what founders and operators are doing about it. No hype, no tool reviews. Just honest thinking from people who are building in real time. Powered by the team at ROIROI.com

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60 recent

June 11, 2026Episode 18140 min

Ep 181: Offcuts Live, Stockholm - You Can't Index Vibes: What AI Search Means for Brands Built on Culture with Erik Arnewing & Ola Ekerhov

On this episode, we did something different - Offcuts went live in Stockholm in front of a room of commerce operators. I'm joined by two people who've each spent the best part of two decades inside consumer brands: Erik Arnewing, CTO at Stellar Equipment and twenty years at Sneakersnstuff before that, and Ola Ekerhov, who ran ecommerce at Acne Studios for sixteen years and now advises mid-sized brands.We split the conversation in two. First, external AI - how customers now discover and buy through a layer you don't control. We get into why AI search reads structured data rather than brand vibe, the test you can run on your own phone in thirty seconds, and what happens to brands built on culture when the discovery surface stops caring about culture. Then, internal AI - the gap between the 76% of businesses using it and the 14% who say it works. Erik walks through querying his entire stack in plain English; Ola is sharp on where it makes teams faster and sloppier.We also get into agentic shopping, who should actually own AI inside a company, and why attribution is getting harder, not easier. Recorded live with our partners on this episode, Centra and DEMA.Enjoy the show.

May 13, 202633 min

Ep 180: Built on Restraint, Tested by AI - How Studio Nicholson Earns Brand Loyalty Without Discounts, with Andrew Cottington, Director of Digital & Ecommerce

On this episode, I ask whether a brand built entirely on restraint and considered growth can have a coherent relationship with AI. I sit down with Andrew Cottington, Director of Digital at Studio Nicholson, the London-based fashion brand known for its modular wardrobe, fabric-led design, and a customer base that tends to find it rather than be found. We dig into how a brand that deliberately avoids chasing scale thinks about customer acquisition and where performance marketing fits. We get into the loyalty programme they rebuilt after deciding fixed discounts were too transactional for their customer. We tackle the agentic storefront they launched in February with Swap, and something Andrew noticed that I thought was sharp: it was their most loyal customers, not new ones, who embraced it first. And we get into what considered growth actually looks like when the tools you're being asked to adopt are moving faster than anyone can predict.If you're running or marketing a brand that leads with taste and is trying to figure out where AI fits without compromising what makes the brand worth following, this one's for you. This episode is sponsored by Swap - if you want to see what the future of storefronts looks like, book a demo at swap-commerce.com/offcuts

May 6, 2026Episode 17932 min

Ep 179: 3x Conversion, 20% Fewer Returns: Inside Swap's Agentic Storefront with Sam Atkinson, Co-Founder & CEO of Swap

On this episode, I sit down with Sam Atkinson, co-founder of Swap, to get into one of the more interesting infrastructure stories in commerce right now. How do you build the back office that nobody wants to think about, and use it as the foundation for something that changes how people shop entirely?Sam played semi-professional football for West Brom until 18, studied law, worked at McKinsey, ran his own DTC business, and joined a fintech before co-founding Swap in 2023. The through line is someone who kept getting close enough to the hard problems in e-commerce to eventually decide to go and solve them.We get into what Swap actually is, the back office suite covering cross-border, returns, tax, compliance and demand planning, and why building that first gave them something most agentic commerce players don't have: the data, the integrations, and the customer trust to move fast. We talk about the agentic storefront they are already running live, the stats on conversion and returns, how they think about high intent versus low intent shoppers, and why they want to be the agent powering experiences like Brunello Cucinelli rather than replace what great brand teams do. And then the fundraising journey, what it actually looks like to raise capital across multiple rounds, and the state of the fund raising market in 2025 and 2026.Enjoy the show.Book a free demo at: swap-commerce.com/offcuts

April 29, 2026Episode 17833 min

Ep 178: Golf, Streetwear and the Dot Com of the Future with Jojo Regan, Co-Founder of MANORS Golf

On this episode, I sit down with Jojo Regan, co-founder of MANORS Golf, to get into one of the more interesting brand building stories in British commerce right now. How do you take a sport with one of the strongest aesthetic traditions in the world and completely rewrite what it looks like?We get into the cultural moment golf is having, why they backed a creator over a tour pro, the 90s nostalgia driving the aesthetic, and what it means to sell adventure rather than apparel. The pivot that defined the business, a fundraise with Andy Murray involved, and whether Manors ever steps outside of golf.And then AI: where Jojo is actually placing bets, why the agentic website is already live and what the dot com of the future looks like for a brand built on culture and storytelling.Enjoy the show.This episode is sponsored by Swap - if you want to see what the future of storefronts looks like, book a demo at swap-commerce.com/offcuts

April 22, 2026Episode 17736 min

Ep 177: Agentic Commerce Through a B2B Marketing Lens with Juan Pellerano-Rendón, CMO of Swap

In this episode, I sit down with Juan, CMO of Swap, to explore a question that's becoming harder to ignore: what does B2B brand building actually look like when the category you're marketing didn't exist two years ago? Swap covers a wide surface area - returns, logistics, package protection, cross-border operations, and now an agentic storefront. We dig into how you build a coherent brand around a platform that does that many things, and why Swap has managed to build genuine cultural presence in the commerce community when most B2B companies struggle to be remembered at all.We get into the agentic storefront - early numbers showing 2x conversions and 20% fewer returns - and what's actually driving those outcomes. We tackle one of the sharper tensions in agentic commerce: what happens to brand voice when an AI agent is the one having the conversation with your customer? And we get into where most operators actually are in their understanding of this shift, and what they should do about it in the next six months.If you're building or marketing a consumer brand and thinking about what AI means for the relationship between your storefront and your customer, this one's for you.If you want to see what the future of storefronts looks like, book a free demo at swap-commerce.com/offcuts.

March 25, 2026Episode 17632 min

Ep 176: What Happens to Physical Brands in an AI World? With Lucas Wasniewski, co-founder & CEO at Flowlife

In this episode, I sit down with Lucas Wasniewski, co-founder and CEO of Flowlife - a Scandinavian recovery-tech brand on a mission to help people reach their full potential through an active lifestyle, enabled by technology. What started as a single product has evolved into an entirely new category within recovery, combining performance, health, and design, while scaling internationally with a strong focus on brand, community, and profitable growth.What began as Lucas’ frustration with a corded massage cushion at his mum’s house has grown into one of the most interesting consumer brands to come out of the Nordics. From wireless massage pillows to infrared saunas, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and light therapy panels, Flowlife has quietly built a category at the intersection of recovery, performance, and science-backed wellness.We explore the brand’s origin story, the shift from product company to lifestyle brand, and how they approach elite athlete partnerships - including Álvaro Morata - not as endorsements, but as true product co-creation.We then get into AI, and this is where it gets interesting. Lucas isn’t thinking about AI as a cost-cutting tool, but as a shift in how brands are discovered and experienced - especially in a world where physical products become more valuable and people ask LLMs instead of Google.If you’re building a physical product brand and trying to figure out where AI fits, this one’s for you.Enjoy the episode.

January 21, 202634 min

Ep 175: Can You Really Trust Your Data? With Henrik Hoffman Kraft, Co-Founder @ DEMA

In this episode, I sit down with Henrik to ask a fundamental question for consumer brands: can you actually trust your data?Drawing on his experience scaling Babyshop and building Dema, Henrik explains why most brands don’t have a data problem in isolation. They have a decision-making problem. Marketing, inventory, fulfilment, returns, and finance all live in different systems, and once you try to connect them to understand real profitability, trust breaks down.We explore why this pushes teams back to gut feel, how modern commerce quietly normalises spending money by default, and why it’s possible to grow faster while losing more cash.We then look at AI and agents, and why they raise the stakes. AI can unlock massive efficiency and insight, but only if the underlying data is clean. Otherwise, it just helps brands make bad decisions faster.If you’re running a consumer brand and feel stuck between gut feel and dashboards you don’t trust, this conversation will resonate.Checkout Factory here.Sign up to our newsletter here.

December 16, 202535 min

Ep 174: Shopify Winter Editions 2026, with Ben Homer Senior Solutions Engineer at Shopify

In this episode, I sit down with Ben to talk through Shopify's Winter Editions 2025, now that the dust has settled from the initial announcements.Ben walks me through how Shopify approaches AI, both internally and for merchants. Inside the company, everyone has access to an internal LLM proxy and cutting-edge tooling. That same thinking flows out to the platform: help brands show up where customers are, which now includes AI chat interfaces, and make operations faster through better tooling.We spend time on agentic commerce, what it means beyond the buzzword, and why it matters for how people will shop. Ben explains the ideas behind Sidekick's evolution and SimGym, which lets any brand test site changes against Shopify's anonymised consumer dataset before going live.The standout for me is how these features connect. SimGym paired with the new Rollouts feature, which handles scheduling and traffic management, creates something that previously required multiple third-party tools. Ben also flags the POS Hub, Shopify's hardware connectivity layer, as worth watching for anyone thinking about retail.Practical, detailed, and useful if you're building on Shopify or just trying to work out what's worth paying attention to in this release.Checkout Factory here.Sign up to our newsletter here.

December 2, 202534 min

Ep 173: Why can’t consumer brands turn AI hype into meaningful value? with Luke Hodgson, co founder of Commerce Thinking & High Cohesion

In this episode, I sit down with Luke to unpack why consumer brands are still struggling to turn AI hype into real value.We break down the big myths, including the widely shared idea that most AI projects fail and whether that was ever true for this industry.Luke shares insights from more than thirty brand interviews, revealing the same pattern everywhere. Leaders believe AI will reshape operations, but most don’t know where to start, feel overwhelmed by the pace of change, and lack a practical playbook. Public case studies are thin because real experiments are happening quietly inside teams with no time to share them.We dig into the blockers too: vendor over-promising, fragmented tech stacks, unclear budgets, and rising pressure from shareholders to show progress.A straight, honest conversation about where brands really are and what it will take to make AI actually deliver.This podcast is brought to you by Glara.ai - the Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform helping ecommerce brands grow through AI search visibility.👉 Learn more at Glara.ai/offcutsCheckout Factory here.Sign up to our newsletter here.

November 19, 202532 min

Ep 172: Is AI actually going to change the world? with Chris Kilin CEO and co-founder at Brandback and Glara.ai

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Kilin, CEO and co-founder of Brandback and Glara.ai, to explore the disruptive power of AI for consumer commerce.We'll dive into the journey that led him from big consulting to building a start-up, and why he believes AI is creating 'real revenues' in a way Web3 never did.We break down the new AI framework for consumer brands - covering both External AI, like agentic shopping, and Internal AI for efficiency - and discuss how to cut through the noise of the crowded AI search visibility landscape.We also tackle the challenge facing most brands: moving from fragmented experimentation to realising true AI efficiency, and we ask Chris how a brand should spend a £50,000 AI budget for maximum impact.Finally, we look ahead to the next 12 months for the optimistic and pessimistic views on AI’s future, and ask the ultimate question: Is AI actually going to change the world?This podcast is brought to you by Glara.ai - the Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform helping ecommerce brands grow through AI search visibility.👉 Learn more at Glara.ai/offcutsCheckout Factory here.Sign up to our newsletter here.