Currently Exploring

Places and systems under present attention.

• Airport lounge access as membership designOpenClose

  A live extension of the retail membership research, testing whether the logic that makes a warehouse-club fee feel meaningful still holds when the product being sold is comfort instead of savings.

  Current thoughts

  Working theory is that the fee matters less than the story it lets you tell yourself about who you are. Same pattern as the Costco case, more expensive iteration.

• How wedding vendors talk about scarcityOpenClose

  Sitting in on vendor conversations this season as a photographer, half working and half taking notes on how urgency gets manufactured politely: 'we're pretty much full for your date, but let me see what I can do.'

  Current thoughts

  The pattern shows up almost identically across photographers, florists, and venues, which suggests it's taught rather than instinctive. Curious whether anyone teaches it explicitly, or whether it's just absorbed.