Only 2% of women called themselves beautiful. Dove built a 20-year platform on that number and doubled sales in three years. It still cannot answer one question.
I’m Piret Ilver, an entrepreneur and shopping science nerd who studies how people have shopped for over a hundred years from the first department stores to today’s e‑commerce giants.
Together with my team, I’ve built the Estonian sock brand Sokisahtel and gourmet salt brand Salt’sUp, and I launched my first online store back in 2005.
That day‑to‑day work in retail and e‑commerce is the lens I use to write about shopping history, brand origin stories and case studies from around the world, how different companies test ideas, learn from shoppers and turn those insights into sales.
Writing these stories is my passion project: I love unpacking how big and small brands started, what they tried, what actually worked and how you can borrow those ideas for your own retail or e‑commerce business.
Alongside that, I work with small business owners through e‑commerce and social media trainings, practical AI‑tool workshops, 1:1 consulting and mentorship helping them turn shopping history and brand stories into concrete next steps for their own shops.
