How Uncommon Goods Has Survived—and Thrived—for 26 Years | CEO Dave Bolotsky at Shoptalk 2025

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are coming to you live from Shop Talk from the avalara booth, number 1554.

We will be here all day today, so come stop by and say hello.

And now, Chris, we have the chance to interview the CEO of Uncommon Goods, Dave Bolotsky.

Dave, happy first day of Shop Talk and welcome to omnitalk.

Thank you.

And thanks for having me.

We're excited.

Yeah.

So, Dave, start off with your background a little bit.

Like I was in doing the research, I was like, I was, you know, I'm familiar with Uncommon Goods, but I was like, wow, you guys have been around for 25 years, give or take, right?

26.

26, technically.

Right, yeah.

So tell us about it.

So prior to starting Uncommon goods, I spent 14 years on Wall street as a research analyst.

Always wanting to be an entrepreneur, start my own business, but wasn't sure what I was going to do.

Learned about the Internet in the mid-90s from a friend of mine, before Netscape was even out there.

And once photographs started being online, people started selling.

I started writing about it as a retail analyst, saying, this is going to be huge, and spent about four years as a research analyst writing about the industry, and then said, you know what?

I'd much rather be a participant than a critic, and came up with the idea for Uncommon Goods back then.

Okay, and what is Uncommon Goods?

Uncommon Goods is a collection of products from independent designers and makers.

Things that you will not find typically at Amazon or a mass market store.

A lot of handmade product in many ways.

It was Etsy before there was an Etsy, and it's an edited version of a site like Etsy.

So I have to ask you, because I feel like we keep hearing about curated marketplaces lately, and you really started kind of doing this 26 years ago.

Now, what do you think is important about the types of brands that you're bringing in or for Uncommon Goods?

What has to be true about the brands in order for them to kind of come on the platform and be worthy of the platform?

Well, it's in our name.

They have to be uncommon and they have to be good.

And by good meaning, quality.

And Uncommon can also reference the quality, but it has to be things that people want that they're going to want to buy.

It has to be a fair price, but really things that they can't find easily anywhere else.

And increasingly, those are products that we're designing and actually manufacturing.

Now, are you Yourself?

Yeah, that's gonna be my question.

Like, how do you actually pick the assortment?

Like, are you out scouring the trade shows?

Are you buying from the vendors?

Or are you actually creating the products collaboratively?

So it's evolved.

Yeah, it's evolved quite a bit.

I mean, when we started the business, we would go to Artisans and they would say, oh, I'm not gonna sell online.

Or they'd say, wait, you, you're in Greenwich Village, which is where our first office was located.

They say, I have a store there.

I can't sell to you because they're that territory.

Right, right.

We really had to convince makers to sell to us.

Now, the 20 something maker is a digital native, and in some ways they're our competition.

They're selling on Shopify, they're selling on Etsy, what have you.

And so exclusive product is incredibly important.

So that's over 40% of what we sell.

You can only get 40% uncommon goods.

Yeah.

And almost half of that we actually design in house, a lot of which we manufacture or arrange the manufacture.

And then as you were suggesting, we also co create.

We have a number of vendors that we've been working with for years and partner with them to create exclusive product.

That's cool.

So, Dave, what brings you to Shop talk?

Always be learning.

Always be learning.

Abl.

Yeah, a little abl.

No, I mean, that's one thing I've learned from being a research analyst.

I was sort of a professional student in a way.

And this industry is constantly evolving and this is a great place to learn what's new.

Yeah.

And that's where we met, I think, first, like, I think you came up to me after a session once and we got to know each other a little bit.

Are you speaking at the show too?

I am not.

You are not.

Okay, got it.

All right, well, wonderful.

Dave, I want to.

I want to change shift gears here a little bit.

I want to talk about macroeconomics and some of the trends that are happening and that I imagine are starting to impact uncommon goods business.

We just had Peter Pernode here of Sheehan talking about, you know, how they're coming into the market.

There's a lot of this dupe culture that's kind of come into it.

How do you think about really making sure that the uncommon goods products stand alone?

You mentioned uncommon and good.

But when that's more accessible to more people now, how do you really make sure that uncommon goods is like defensible against some of these new things coming into market that are trying to be Uncommon goods.

I think it comes down to constantly coming up with those compelling new items.

We've increasingly have to be inventors or innovators or partners with those inventors or innovators.

I mean, that's.

The table stakes are much higher than they were when we started.

How has that kind of stuff changed your business and your day to day operations?

I mean, are you working with your partners in different ways?

Are you.

I mean, we have manufacturing equipment now.

You know, we've got a, a warehouse in Brooklyn that is now a warehouse and manufacturing facility.

Okay.

And it's, it's very light manufacturing, but it's engraving, glassware, decoration things.

Embroidery is something we're adding.

Okay.

So it's, it's changing.

What, what are some of like the trends or the cool, like products that you are inspired by now that we might expect to see coming up here in the next couple months or as gifting seasons come about?

This.

Well, Mother's Day is not far away.

What should I put on my Mother's Day list is what I'm really asking you, Dave.

We've got a very cool QR mug, literature, QR mug, horoscope, QR mugs where you can click your phone and every day get your horoscope.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, wow.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's very uncommon and good.

And is that something that you're manufacturing?

Okay, interesting.

Okay.

Oh, awesome.

So that's all happening in the Brooklyn studio?

Correct.

Wow.

Okay, I gotta check it out.

Yeah, no, it sounds awesome.

All right, Dave, so I'm curious.

You said ABL always be learning.

So we're standing on the exhibit hall floor, you know, like Ann said, We're at booth 1554.

What is your approach to shop talk?

Like, how do you try to learn, you know, how do you try to go serendipitously, just go wherever, you know, the spirit takes you or do you you to take a more planful approach to a conference like this?

How do you do it?

I would say all of the above.

All of the above.

I'll look at sessions and look at companies that I'm interested in learning from speakers who I may know.

So I'll go to a fair number of sessions.

I do the hosted sessions also.

Yeah, I invest the time also to go through and see who I want to meet at some of these other companies, which has worked out well.

And then, yeah, I'll walk around the floor, depending on how much energy I have.

Yeah, right.

Depending on what day it is.

What you did the night Before.

Yeah.

Right.

I'm curious.

So do you have your eye on any sessions in particular or any tech as well that you want to learn more about?

I would say we've dipped our toe into retail media.

I mean, that's been hyped a lot.

I've been very skeptical about it because I really love the concept of having that ongoing relationship with the customer.

And depending on how you engage with retail media, you can just essentially, particularly if you're on a marketplace, not have that relationship.

So we're still figuring that out.

We dipped our toe in last year and are growing that this year.

And also physical stores.

We had a pop up this past holiday at Grand Central and saw very good results from that.

And it's something we're looking to expand on.

Did you?

Okay.

Pop ups are a hard business to do.

Right too.

That's good to hear.

Yeah.

Well, part of that is a function of ad costs, online skyrocketing, and you've got to find new ways to attract customers.

Right.

I'm curious.

This has been top of mind for me too because I literally just got off stage listening to Ann talk about it with some different folks that she interviewed.

Do you have a loyalty program or how do you think about loyalty?

I think about loyalty a lot.

And we have a program called Uncommon Perks.

Okay.

So instead of, what is it now, $159 a year for Prime.

Yes, it's only $25 a year and actually year one is only $15 to get unlimited free shipping at Uncommon Goods.

And we have about 30% of our revenue and growing comes from those members.

Really.

Okay, that's interesting.

And I imagine you get some more from them and you can learn how to kind of continue to evolve and build a business.

Yeah.

It's a great source of both loyalty and also customer information.

Right.

Especially as you start to look into retail media and things like that too.

So I gotta ask you, Dave, because like, you know, I mean, you're kind of a needle in a stack of needles.

I mean, there aren't that many pure E commerce players that have survived the length of time that you guys have.

So kudos to that.

So I'm curious, as we get you out on this, how are you looking at AI?

Are you looking at it?

So we've been using AI for six years.

Okay.

Initially in customer service service.

Yep.

And that's been very effective for automated responses, but you have to do it with the human touch.

So when we would have automated responses initially, we would monitor them and say, is this giving the Customer what she wants.

Yeah.

And we're now writing copy with the assistance of AI.

Our coders are writing code with the assistance of AI.

And so, you know, is there a lot of hype?

Yes.

But, you know, I remember when smartphones came out.

Right.

And everybody said, oh, you know, mobile is going to dominate in no time frame.

It took about 15, 20 minutes, right?

It did, yeah.

But now it did.

You know, an AI will probably be faster, but there's no question that it's sort of going to be like going from an adding machine to a calculator.

I think it'll accelerate the pace.

So you're really using it as an efficiency tool for the most part, to make the team more productive.

More efficient, I would say, primarily.

What are you seeing others do?

That's what I think is probably best in class.

I know that's how Ann and I use it in our daily work, too, is more to make us more efficient and more productive in what we do.

And it sounds like those are the use cases.

We always hear customer service, too, as a way to streamline things and potentially be more automated in that respect, too.

We're hearing that and just got off stage, you know, talking.

Hearing about that from everybody.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's consistent in what we're hearing from the retailers we had on stage.

Nestle, Purina, Wayfair and Nyx.

They're all trying to figure out it might not be customer facing right now outside of the customer support and where's my order?

You know, the main questions that people are reaching out to about, but it's really about, like, how do you figure out how to distill down some of the processes that you're doing day to day that will free up your teams to work on more strategic initiatives than, you know, submitting expense reports or those kinds of things.

Yeah, I mean, I'd love to figure out, and we've played around a little with it.

How can it help us create.

Create new products, invent new products, sharing sales trends and helping us?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, we'll have to keep a close eye on that and what you end up using AI for for your next.

26 years, the uncommonly good usages of AI.

All right, well, David Blasky, thank you so much, man.

Thanks for doing this.

This is great.

I reached out and we're like, yeah, let's do it.

So we appreciate the time.

Thanks, Avalara, for supporting our work here.

Again, we're going to be here all day.

We got a number of interviews coming.

Your way.

We're at booth 1554.

We're on the dock.

Anne.

We're sitting the bay here, if you can see it.

I almost fell off the dock earlier today, but I'm still on it.

We're still doing it.

And, Anne, as always, be careful out there.