After being laid off in 2014, Toyiah Marquis turned her passion for patches into a thriving business built on cultural representation and authentic connection. Patch Party Club started as an in-store experience and single-product experiment on Temu. But it quickly evolved into a scalable business model that now reaches audiences Toyiah never expected to serve.

How do you transform personal passion into global reach? And what happens when a marketplace's algorithm becomes your best marketing tool?

We sit down with Toyiah to explore how she leveraged Temu's platform to test, learn, and scale strategically, while sticking with her mission and vision as a founder. From creating a special patch for customers battling cancer to discovering unexpected demographic opportunities, Toyiah's journey shows how marketplace success comes from staying true to your brand ethos while remaining flexible enough to evolve.

• Starting small works: Toyiah launched with one product on Temu, using marketplace dynamics to test viability before scaling strategically.
• Temu's marketplace exposure brought her patches to a diverse audience beyond her traditional target market, revealing unexpected growth opportunities.
• Emotional connection drives commerce: Products created with genuine care and cultural representation resonated deeply, building loyal customer relationships at scale.
• Marketplace testing provides real-time validation: Marketplaces like Temu can serve as laboratories to gather data insights before committing to broader expansion.

• Learn more about Patch Party Club
• Explore Temu's seller services and marketplace solutions

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Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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The Future Commerce team reflects on their favorite podcast moments from a year of extraordinary conversations. From haunted dolls and architectural rhizomes to debates about capitalism and idealism, these episodes challenged conventional wisdom about how brands influence culture and why efficiency alone won't save us. (Feat. Rory Sutherland, Dami Lee, Andrew McLuhan, Nick Susi, Kunle Campbell, Ana Andjelic.)

• VISIONS 2025 brought together Dami Lee, Andrew Huang, and more creative pioneers to explore the future of culture through the lens of commerce and its effects on humans
• Spooky Commerce pushed our limits: Jolene the doll elevated spooky season to performance art
• Idealism struggles to scale under capitalism's efficiency demands
• Heritage isn't always precious—sometimes it needs critical interrogation
• Technology transforms humanity whether we contemplate it or not
• Marketing success occurs beyond the attribution window we measure
• Rory Sutherland’s conversation was our most-downloaded episode of 2025, for good reason.
• "It's really hard to be idealistic in a capitalist society or period." — Brian Lange [00:13:12]
• "We're not measuring other forms of what makes things successful. Are we just letting technologists, efficiency ops and finance run the world? I don't think it leads to the greatest outcome where we're all happiest." — Phillip Jackson on Rory Sutherland's marketing critique [00:36:13]

• Listen to Dami Lee’s VISIONS presentation on architecture, the structure of our lives, rhizomes, and more.
• Listen to Kunle Campbell’s conversation with Phillip at K:LDN on capitalism vs. idealism and meaning.
• Listen to Ana Andjelic’s episode on the throughline that connects brand culture to operations, merchandise, on-the-ground events, and more.
• Listen to Andrew McLuhan’s 2-hour feature unpacking his grandfather Marshall McLuhan’s predictions and insights on media, technology, and what technological development will do to our future.
• Listen to Nick Susi’s Halloween special on the true story behind the War of the Worlds mania (and the media war that drove it).
• Listen to Rory Sutherland’s episode on the fat tail of marketing and what cultural shifts marketers of tomorrow should be preparing for.

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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The brands that will thrive in the next era of commerce understand that context drives everything, from platform choice to storytelling and trust formation. As a result, success hinges on a brand’s ability to serve customers across multiple contexts rather than controlling single experiences.

For the season finale, Commerce CEO Travis Hess joins Phillip and Lindsay to explore what it means when "the customer is the channel." The conversation tackles designing for AI agents alongside humans, reaching customers across surfaces independent of purchase location, and balancing data-driven marketing with authentic storytelling. Travis shares why brands must embrace agentic commerce now, and the mindset shifts required for 2026, synthesizing the season's insights into actionable guidance.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Omnimodal commerce shifts focus from channels to surfaces where customers engage across contexts.
• Design for agents, not just humans. Agentic intermediaries will shape future commerce experiences.
• "The customer is the channel" requires reaching consumers wherever they want to engage.
• Balance data-driven performance marketing with authentic human storytelling to preserve brand equity.
• [00:37:35] "Brands need to go where their customers want to engage them across different surfaces—whether they're buying through that channel or it's influencing purchase through a different channel you may or may not own."
• [00:39:15] "Brands need to design for agents, not just humans and agent intermediaries. They're the ones who are going to show up and ultimately win. It's not like the old days, where we just assumed humans were coming to our channels."
• ibution and surface and signal more than probably the traditional commerce side."
• [00:33:55] "There's nothing more important than the brand, than the narrative, than the story, than the equity that is there. That is the power. I very much see that being controlled still by humans and maybe informed by AI."

• New Modes Research: How AI is Shaping New Commerce Contexts and Expectations
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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