Issue 297  26th February 2021

Happy Friday!

Huge congratulations from all at Axonista HQ go to WaterBear CEO Ellen Windemuth, whose documentary My Octopus Teacher has been shortlisted for a 2021 Oscar. If you enjoyed this movie, you can see more of this beautiful underwater environment in the short movie Africa's Hidden Seaforest, available now on the WaterBear platform.

This week, Netflix announced a new feature that makes it easy for viewers to binge-watch series on the go. Download For You automatically downloads movies or shows that Netflix recommends, based on a user's viewing history. Users can choose the amount of content they’re prepared to have downloaded to their device, and will find a selection of recommended shows available to watch on their device, when they're outside network coverage.

Our Top Pick this week is an article from industry analyst Ben Evans which looks at Shopify's 2020 results. Shopify reported that consumers spent a total of $120bn on its platform in 2020, almost double the amount spent in 2019. One of the key trends driving this growth is brands going direct to consumers online.

For all sorts of reasons, we now have an explosion of new consumer brands using the internet as their first channel, and most of them want to go direct and own their own customer relationships.

Speaking of brands using the internet as a first channel, we have two great examples of this this week from Machine-A, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. Machine-A and the Institute of Digital Fashion have partnered to create an augmented store to showcase London Fashion Week brands. Online payments company Klarna teamed up with Cosmopolitan to host a virtual shopping holiday in the U.S., which includes a livestream shopping show.

Until next week!