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I think a lot of times when people talk about merchants, it's almost a nostalgic look back at the time where the world moved at a very different pace, and information was very different.

I don't believe you can buy or sell 'cool.'

Maybe the coolest people are the ones who don't care about being cool.

We live in a world that tells us not to care, to consume everything in sight. It tells us that being cool and being an individual actually means buying what everyone else is buying and doing what everyone else is doing.

There's no better friend to any merchant than a fair competitor.

There are a lot of things about having money that are perceived to be cool but that aren't. Maybe if you're a CEO jerk who likes going coast to coast by himself in a G4, then that's fine. But that's not me. And it never will be.

What I sell is the higher knowledge of knowing what's next and not following the trend of what's now.

Businesses are going to innovate in how they bring prices down so people can shop the way they want.

We buy and sell goods. We buy low and sell higher - that's what we all do to make a profit. But I consider a merchant someone who has a certain intuition and instinct, and - very important - knows how to run a business, knows the numbers.

We're talking to every third-party supplier every day of the week, and our traders are talking to them and buying products from them. When we're doing that, we see opportunities which no one else sees.