Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.

Call it Generation Sell.

Amen! This is so on it!

It’s not that the Beverly Hillbillies can’t sometimes afford the luxuries of Beverly Hills, because they can. Many of them drive brand new cars, wear their Tag Heuer as a status wrist band and have all gone to the Caribbean and dished out the $150 for a 20 minute massage with hot rocks. It’s just that they borrowed 10 times for it. It’s not that the Madison Avenue crowd can’t afford to shop there, because they can. But most of them have borrowed even more to do so. Like Donald Trump, the only ‘billionaire’ who has to do a TV show to earn a living, are we really that rich? Or can we no longer afford ourselves?

OKL creative vp Joshua Liberson | Courtesy: One Kings Lane

One Kings Lane, the flash sale startup specializing in home furnishings, is in the midst of a “pivot,” according to CEO Doug Mack.

The company isn’t abandoning its current business model, he says; instead, it’s investing on the editorial and design side, with a recently opened New York City creative office complementing the engineering team in San Francisco. The vision is to turn One Kings Lane into the destination site for home décor, one that people visit even when they’re not looking to buy a sofa. For example, the startup has been adding more how-to content. At the end of September, it ran a promotion called “Five Rooms in Five Days,” where the site featured decorating tips for a different room each day—with, of course, handy links to purchase the featured goods—leading to its highest sales ever.

A driving force behind the initiative is the company’s vp of creative, Joshua Liberson, who joined last year after One Kings Lane acquired his design firm Helicopter. Liberson was responsible for the look of publications like Condé Nast’s defunct lifestyle magazine Domino, and he said he’s using a magazine sensibility to offer “context” to One Kings Lane’s sales.

And OKL isn’t the only shopping site seeking context. Competitor Gilt Groupe just hired Tom Delavan, another Domino alum, as its editorial director.

The way forward: Content + Commerce