Ep 181: Offcuts Live, Stockholm - You Can't Index Vibes: What AI Search Means for Brands Built on Culture with Erik Arnewing & Ola Ekerhov
OffcutsShow Notes
On this episode, we did something different - Offcuts went live in Stockholm in front of a room of commerce operators. I'm joined by two people who've each spent the best part of two decades inside consumer brands: Erik Arnewing, CTO at Stellar Equipment and twenty years at Sneakersnstuff before that, and Ola Ekerhov, who ran ecommerce at Acne Studios for sixteen years and now advises mid-sized brands.
We split the conversation in two. First, external AI - how customers now discover and buy through a layer you don't control. We get into why AI search reads structured data rather than brand vibe, the test you can run on your own phone in thirty seconds, and what happens to brands built on culture when the discovery surface stops caring about culture. Then, internal AI - the gap between the 76% of businesses using it and the 14% who say it works. Erik walks through querying his entire stack in plain English; Ola is sharp on where it makes teams faster and sloppier. We also get into agentic shopping, who should actually own AI inside a company, and why attribution is getting harder, not easier. Recorded live with our partners on this episode, Centra and DEMA. Enjoy the show.
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