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The small American bookstore is back. Over the last five years, the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. jumped by 70%. In 2025 alone, 422 new bookstores opened, according to the American Booksellers Association. The industrys success was far from inevitable. For a long time, indie bookstores were struggling. In 1995, when Amazon opened as the Earths largest bookstore and started undercutting the prices at brick and mortar stores, readers quickly started shopping online. Small stores, which were already facing competition from chains like Borders, started to close. By 2009, the number of independent bookstores across the country had dropped to an all-time low. Experts predicted that the industry would collapse. But then instead of continuing to declline, the numbers instead started to reverse The growth accelerated after the pandemic. If you step back and try to understand what really happened from 2010 to today, it is a story of resilience, says Ryan Raffaelli, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies industries that beat the odds and survive in unexpected ways in the wake of technological change. Raffaelli has spent years researching the turnaround of indie bookstores. Its a story of hope. And its a story about the power of community. [Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar] A new strategy for a digital threat Soon after the rise of Amazon, some bookstores tried to compete directly with the online giant by adding more titles to their stores, Raffaeli says. But others eventually adopted a different strategy, doubling down on whats uniquely possible in a physical space. First, theres the ability to convene peoplesomething that small bookstores have always done with readings and other events, but that theyre doing even more now. Some stores have as many as 500 events a year. These are not just author events, but birthday parties, all these other types of things that are inviting people into the actual physical space to engage with other like-minded individuals that are passionate about literary topics, says Raffaeli. People start finding their own tribe and they go, and I want to be around these people. Theyve also leaned into curation: They start curating whats in the stores quite differently than what you would experience if you were going on Amazon, where you have this algorithm thats sort of saying, okay, heres the last three things you bought, this is what youd like, he says. Independents, because theyre so tapped into the author community, are often doing things to introduce readers to books and genres that the algorithm has yet to figure out. Its unclear if it will ever figure it out. Thats possible because the people who work at independent bookstores are at the cutting edge of whats happening in literary culture, he says. Amazon hasnt duplicated that. (When Amazon tried to open physical bookstores itself, they quickly failed because they didnt have the same foundation of booklovers choosing books, or any sense of authenticity.) [Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar] Maybe most importantly, independent bookstores have made a sense of community core to their identity. They were some of the first businesses to advocate for shopping local. It begins to shift the value proposition for why you would pay more in the independent bookstore compared to as if you were shopping online at a discount,” says Raffaeli. “Because many consumers will say, I will pay extra because I know that this is actually an investment in my community. That wasn’t the case in the early 2000s, when consumers were more willing to chase a deal online. Now more people are aware of the value of keeping physical bookstores open. “This is a part of a two-decade process of educating the consumer,” he says. “And also retooling the stores to highlight things that may have always been there, but to really help people understand and appreciate the experience of entering an environment like this.” [Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar] The pandemic boosted support The pandemic was another existential threat for bookstores, but ended up boosting support. “I think that in some ways, the pandemic woke people up to processes that were invisible to them before and made them realize that they had to act to support what was important to them,” says Andy Hunter, the founder of Bookshop.org, a platform that launched in 2020 to help indie bookstores sell books more easily online. Online sales helped many bookstores survive the shutdown, and still provide significant support. (Bookshop.org has sent more than $9 million to local stores in 2025, and independent bookstores’ own online sales have also grown.) But after the pandemic, there was even more interest in spending time in stores in person. “I think they benefitted from digital fatigue,” says Raffaeli. “People were excited to come back in and shop local and feel like the experience could exist and engage with other people in the store.” [Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar] Bookstores have always been a meeting place, but they keep finding ways to nudge people to stay longer. I didnt want to have a bookstore where it was just transactional, like youre coming in, looking at books, and leaving, says Maura Cheeks, the owner of Lizs Book Bar, a bookstore in Brooklyn with a cozy bar that serves wine, beer from local breweries, and coffee and tea. I wanted to create a public space where people could come and relax, feel inspired, meet strangers, and just sort of spend time. The store is one of a growing number to have a bar. It’s also a way to help a low-margin business survive and afford steep New York City rents. On a typical weekday, Liz’s Book Bar is filled with people talking and working at the bar; the store sees higher book sales on weekends, but the bar provides critical revenue. Other bookstores have found creative ways to add other merchandise with higher margins than books, from literary-themed socks to cookware next to a section of cookbooks. [Photo: Janelle Hales/courtesy Liz’s Book Bar] Sharing best practices Because the stores are geographically constrained, they’re more willing than other businesses to share best practices with each other. (They’re also motivated by the fact that bookstores are seen as cultural institutions, and there’s a shared goal to preserve that culture, not just compete as a small business.) The industry association, the American Booksellers Association, hosts frequent events where booksellers can meet and share tips or take classes. “I took a class and you could see how these practices were being institutionalized into the new way of thinking about how we compete,” says Raffaeli. “All these stores that start opening are benefiting from this experimentation that happened in the early 2000s…the survivors around that time started diffusing these practices at the industry level. I think that’s a big part of the story: they’re coming together and they’re teaching each other.” Raffaeli is now studying how the lessons from booksellers can be applied to other situations, from museums to movie theaters to companies that want to bring workers back to the office. “We’re seeing people want to engage with one another,” he says. “They want to feel like they’re part of something, a part of the social fabric of their community or their organization. But you have to give them a reason to engage and you have to create the right conditions for that to happen.”
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E-Commerce
For years, deepfakes were treated as a political or social media oddity, a strange corner of the internet where celebrity faces (of women 99% of the time) were pasted onto fake videos (porn in 99% of the cases) and nobody quite knew what to do about it. But that framing is now dangerously outdated, because deepfakes have quietly evolved into something much more systemic: an operational risk for corporations, capable of corrupting supply chains, financial workflows, brand trust, and even executive decision-making. Recent headlines show that synthetic media is no longer a fringe experiment. It is a strategic threat, one that companies are not prepared for. When a deepfake can steal $25 million In February 2025, global engineering firm Arup fell victim to a sophisticated deepfake fraud. Attackers used AI-generated video and audio to impersonate senior leadership and convinced an employee to transfer $25 million in company funds. The World Economic Forum described it as a milestone event: the moment synthetic fraud graduated from experiment to enterprise-scale theft. For any executive who still thinks of deepfakes as a social media phenomenon, this should be a wake-up call. Arup had strong cybersecurity. What it didnt have was identity resiliencethe ability to verify that the human on the other side of the call was actually human. CEO fraud, but this time with perfect replicas In the past year, deepfake CEO-fraud attempts have surged, targeting CFOs, procurement teams, and M&A departments. A 2025 report noted that more than half of surveyed security professionals had encountered synthetically generated executive impersonation attempts. Its easy to see why: Deepfake video is now real-time and high-resolution. Voice cloning requires only a few seconds of audio. Attackers can now spoof emotion, urgency, or stress, exactly the cues that override employee skepticism. One midsize tech firm reportedly lost $2.3 million after a convincingly faked audio call instructed finance to transfer funds for an urgent acquisition. Clearly, traditional anti-phishing training doesnt prepare employees for a perfectly reconstructed version of their boss. Deepfakes are no longer about politics: Theyre about business models When a deepfake impersonates a celebrity to promote a fraudulent investment scheme, thats reputational damage. When a deepfake impersonates your spokesperson, CFO, product, or supply chain partner, that becomes a corporate disaster. Weve entered a phase where synthetic media sits squarely inside the business risk landscape, according to Trend Micros 2025 industry report. Synthetic content now drives new waves of fraud, identity theft, and business compromise. This isnt hypothetical. Its operational. The new supply chain risk executives are not seeing Brands increasingly rely on complex ecosystems: logistics partners, suppliers, distributors, influencers, service providers, third-party integrators. Every one of those nodes depends on trust. Deepfakes turn trust into an attack surface. Imagine these scenarios: A fake video from your CEO announcing a shift in sourcing strategy sends suppliers into panic. A voice clone instructs your Asian manufacturing partner to halt delivery. A synthetic leaked clip of a defective product goes viral before your PR team wakes up. A deepfake of a key supplier falsely confirms cybersecurity weaknesses, causing downstream partners to sue. These are not science fiction. They are logical extensions of attack patterns that are already being deployedand they expose a blind spot in corporate risk management: the integrity of identity itself. Why deepfakes hit brands harder than politics Political deepfakes spark outrage. Corporate deepfakes trigger something worse: Loss of customer rust Stock volatility Insider trading vulnerabilities Lawsuits from partners Regulatory scrutiny The Securities an Exchange Commision has already warned the financial sector that AI-generated impersonation is reshaping fraud strategies, calling for upgraded identity-verification standards. If regulators are paying attention, executives should too. Why the traditional cybersecurity playbook isnt enough Firewalls wont stop a deepfake. Multi-factor authentication wont stop a deepfake. Encryption wont stop a deepfake. Deepfakes weaponize something no cybersecurity team has historically been responsible for: trust in human appearance and voice. The weakest link is no longer a password. Its a persons belief that theyre speaking with someone they know. Identity, not infrastructure, is the new vulnerability. Why brands must treat deepfakes as supply chain risk Most companies still relegate deepfakes to the PR desk or misinformation team. Thats naive. Deepfakes threaten: Procurement workflows (fake POs, fake cancellations) Vendor relationships (fake disputes, fake compliance issues) Finance approvals (deepfake CFO instructions) Customer trust (fake product failures, fake CEO messages) Employee morale (synthetic HR directives, fake memos) This is not just about fraud. Deepfakes can disrupt the coordination mechanisms that make supply chains work. They can paralyze a system without ever touching a firewall. What business leaders must do (now) Here is the emerging best-practice playbook for executives: Add deepfake risk to your enterprise risk management framework: If ransomware is a board-level issue, synthetic identity needs to be too. Implement verification protocols that do not rely on voice or video: Use secondary digital signatures, secure channels, or pre-agreed workflows. Audit your vendors, suppliers, and partners: Ask whether they have deepfake-resilience policies, because their vulnerabilities become yours. Deploy detection systems, but dont trust them blindly: Infosecurity Magazine notes that detection tools are improving but remain unreliable. Train employees to distrust urgency: Most deepfake fraud leverages emotional acceleration: This is critical, do it now. Your strongest defense is giving employees permission to slow down. Build an internal identity resilience policy: Define exactly how major decisions and financial approvals must be confirmed. No exceptions for I saw them on video. The uncomfortable truth is that AI has made seeing and hearing obsolete. With AI, weve crossed a psychological Rubicon: Your eyes and ears are no longer authentication mechanisms. Executives who fail to internalize this will face the same fate as companies that ignored phishing, ransomware, or cloud governance a decade agoonly faster, and with higher stakes. Deepfakes are not about what is true: They are about what is believable. And in business, believability is often all that matters. The new leadership challenge The companies that thrive in the AI era wont be those with the biggest models or the flashiest copilots. They will be the ones that redesign trust, identity, and verification from the ground up. Because if deepfakes can corrupt your operations and supply chain, then defending against them is not an IT problem. It is a leadership problem. And if you dont solve it now, someone else (perhaps an algorithm with your CEOs face) might solve it for you.
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E-Commerce
Big firms are fighting for talent and offering major perks to match. Heres how you can position yourself to be in the middle of a bidding war.
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E-Commerce
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