Gary Vaynerchuck, CEO of VaynerMedia, a full-service advertising agency servicing Fortune 100 clients, has a lot of opinions. He’s made a name for himself sharing those thoughts all day, every day, through his daily vlog DailyVee. On a recent vlog, a telescope retailer asked a pertinent question: As the internet squeezes out the middleman, how does a retailer position themselves to endure? Vaynerchuck’s answer: Become the product.
“The retailer has had the last 20 to 30 years of leverage at scale,” Vaynerchuck said. “Walgreens, Walmart. The model is flipping, and the producer of the product is going become the leverage point, but that is going to take real time. It’s not like Walmart, Walgreens are dead tomorrow. Right now, every single product at Walgreens is working on the ability to make the economics work and not be at the mercy of Walgreens. That’s still going to be a 20-year timeline.”