Brokerage vs Fulfillment

A few weeks ago a marketing consultant named Tom Goodwin wrote the following opening line in a post called The Battle Is For The Customer Interface:

[In 2015] Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.

The thing is, this isn't quite true.

The Power of Physical Words

The Holstee Manifesto

I went to a potluck dinner last night at Holstee, a business that describes itself as "a Brooklyn-based design studio offering sustainably made posters, cards, and frames that inspire people to live mindfully." They are known for the Holstee Manifesto, a declaration of what a successful life would like, which they wrote for themselves at the outset of their journey, with no intention of turning it into a product.

The mix of people included total newcomers such as myself, as well as two of the founders and a number of members of the Holstee "family," who had been there since the beginning (or almost beginning). I was sitting next to co-founder Dave Radparvar, who was talking with a couple of these Holstee family members about the Manifesto and its runaway success. They sell so many posters of this simple statement of purpose that it's become the economic engine that enables the rest of their activity. Apparently people even get it tattooed on their body. They have a whole page of Holstee Manifesto products, ranging from $12 for a 5" x 7" print, to $180 for a  48" x 64" wall decal; it's almost as if they've become a company that sells the Manifesto as its primary line of business.

On the face of it, this seems highly unlikely. Don't we lament the death of print, even while we argue that content should be free? Why would people pay for content that any five-year old who has used the Internet could find for free. Holstee themselves have a downloads page where you can get a high-res copy that you could print and hang yourself. So what's going on here?