The Me Store: What 9operators Got Right About AI Commerce

The 9operators podcast recently had one of those episodes where you realize the ground is shifting under your feet (listen here). Sean Frank from Ridge, Mike Beckham from Simple Modern, and Matt Bertulli from Pela spent two hours dissecting what AI commerce actually means for brands.

One concept kept coming up: the Me store. Not your store. Mine.

The Me Store Concept

Here's how Sean described it:

I could see each of us having our own personal feed or shopping experience that's not a brand store, but a Me store.

Think about how wealthy people shop. They don't go to stores. Stores come to them. Personal shoppers curate options, bring them home, you try things on, keep what you want. The rest disappears.

That's what AI shopping becomes at scale. Your agent knows your preferences, your sizing, your budget, what you bought before, what you liked and didn't like. It pulls from every brand's catalog and shows you five things. Not 5,000. Just five.

Mike put it perfectly:

Most services that we enjoy right now are just rich people services that technology has brought to us and made more affordable.

What This Means for Brands

Sean runs Ridge Wallet. He pays Shopify $40,000 a month for his store. His honest take:

I don't know if people are going to be using stores in the future.

He's not wrong. When someone asks ChatGPT for a wallet recommendation, they're not browsing Ridge.com. They're getting three to five suggestions. If Ridge isn't in that set, the sale goes to someone else.

The Me store isn't a Ridge store or a Simple Modern store or a Pela store. It's my store, built from every available product, optimized for what I care about.

Product Data Is Everything

This changes what matters. Mike made the point about his drinkware business:

A furniture brand we work with had great photography and reviews, but half their products were missing dimensions. When someone asked ChatGPT for a coffee table for a small apartment, their products weren't even considered.

AI agents can't infer. Humans can look at a photo and estimate size. Agents need explicit data.

Your product feed needs:

Materials and dimensions
Compatibility details
Use cases and care instructions
Sustainability information
Warranty and return details

Not buried in paragraph descriptions. In structured fields that machines can parse.

Source Authority Over Backlinks

The conversation shifted to what makes AI agents trust recommendations. It's not backlinks. It's citations from credible sources.

One in-depth review from a respected publication in your category beats fifty generic mentions. AI models synthesize information from reviews, buying guides, and trusted publications. If you're in those conversations, you get weighted higher.

This is old-school PR with a new purpose. You're not chasing brand awareness. You're building the authority signals that AI models use to decide what to recommend.

The Brand vs Trend Problem

Mike brought up something crucial about Stanley drinkware. They had a massive run-up, everyone knew the brand, it felt like they were winning. Then the numbers showed 50% declines year over year.

His take:

I think there's a real big difference between brand and trend. Stanley was simultaneously gaining brand awareness but riding a huge trend. The numbers are saying a lot of it was trend, less of it was brand.

Real brand is sticky. It's enduring. It's conviction. Trend is capricious. You can make a lot of money riding trends, but it's not sustainable.

In AI commerce, where only three to five products get recommended, you need actual brand strength. Being trendy won't save you when the algorithm decides who shows up.

The Disintermediation Risk

The scariest part of the conversation was Sean describing email newsletters:

Chat's going to read every email and it will tell you the five things it knows you're going to like. There's going to be another layer between you and the user.

Every brand on the call understood the threat. You're building relationships with customers, but AI agents might become the intermediary. Your email goes to their agent. Their agent decides if they hear about your new launch.

As Matt said:

Everything is threatened.

What Brands Should Do Now

The discussion kept coming back to practical moves:

Test your visibility today Ask ChatGPT what it would recommend for the problems your products solve. See if you show up. Check who's ranking above you and why.

Fix your product data Start with your top 20 SKUs. Make sure every attribute an AI agent might need is complete and accurate. Don't try to fix your entire catalog at once.

Earn credible citations Reach out to reviewers and editors in your category. Send samples. Make it easy for them to feature your products. Focus on quality over volume.

Enable frictionless checkout If someone has to leave the conversation, create an account, and navigate multiple screens, you're losing to competitors who make purchase instant.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Mike said something that stuck with me:

Be careful whose grave you dance on because next week it might be yours.

He was talking about how people celebrated when traditional media got disrupted. "Learn to code" became the dismissive response. Now coders are getting disrupted by AI.

Ecommerce is next. SaaS platforms serving ecommerce are next. Everyone gets disrupted eventually.

The brands that survive won't be the ones clinging to the old model. They'll be the ones who saw the Me store future coming and prepared for it.

Why This Matters

The operators on this podcast run brands doing tens of millions to hundreds of millions in revenue. They're not speculating about distant futures. They're planning for what happens in 12 to 24 months.

Sean's already thinking about what Ridge looks like when his Shopify store isn't the primary sales channel. Mike's preparing Simple Modern for a world where personal shopping feeds replace browsing. Matt's ensuring Pela shows up when agents recommend sustainable products.

The Me store concept isn't theoretical. It's the logical endpoint of where AI commerce is heading. A personalized feed that pulls from every brand, optimized for you, with no need to visit individual stores.

If you're a brand, your job is making sure you're in that feed. That means product data completeness, source authority, and showing up in the right AI-powered recommendations.

Tools like Wildcard exist to help you see where you stand today. Test your rankings for key buyer intents. Identify what competitors have that you're missing. Fix the gaps before the Me store becomes the default shopping experience.

The future these operators described isn't coming. It's here. The question is whether you're ready for it.