The Knockoff

by Lucy Sykes

  “Victory is in the eye of the beholder,” Imogen wrote, quite pleased with herself.

  She was just finishing up and moving to check her email when Annabel wandered downstairs. It was fifteen minutes earlier than she usually emerged in the morning and she was wearing one of Alex’s cable-knit fisherman sweaters over her khaki school pants.

  “Does this make me look fat?” she asked. Imogen felt a stab in her stomach hearing her beautiful daughter even say those words out loud. Ever since Annabel was a baby, Imogen had been careful to try to cultivate a positive body image, knowing that her own job as the editor of a magazine about fashion could somehow lead her daughter to doubt her looks. Objectively it was true that Annabel was a beautiful little girl, a replica of Alex. Johnny was the one with the blond curls and fair and delicate features like Imogen’s, but Annabel had her husband’s dark smoldering looks. She was a healthy size, not stick thin like many of the little girls in her school, but athletic, which was a natural by-product of years of soccer practice and eating well.

  “Darling, you look adorable.” Annabel winced at the word “adorable.” Ten was most definitely too old to be referred to as adorable.

  Imogen kept going. She didn’t know what else to do. “You look beautiful. Do you want me to braid your hair?” Annabel shook her head, her dark curls moving in waves around her shoulders.

  “Are you sure? We can do one of those wonderful wraparound braids, the kind I saw Selena Gomez wearing to her movie premiere last week. I taught myself how to do it from a YouTube video just so I could do it on your hair. I know it will look so pretty on you.” Annabel had her arms crossed in front of her still blessedly flat chest and looked at her with skepticism. Imogen could tell the idea of a wraparound braid was incredibly appealing. Maybe now was the time to talk about Candy Cool.

  “And is there anything at all you want to talk about?” The girl just shook her head, choosing instead to plop herself in front of Imogen. This was her way of telling her, without telling her, that she did want her hair braided.

  Imogen had to stop herself from leaning in to take a whiff of her daughter’s head. Ever since they were babies Imogen loved nothing more than smelling Annabel’s and Johnny’s heads. She thought she would get over it once they no longer had that distinctive new baby smell, but it carried over into their time as toddlers and even now, with Annabel on the cusp of being a teenager. Instead she wound her fingers through Annabel’s soft hair, trying to remember what she’d watched on the video the night before. The result was surprisingly good and Imogen asked permission to snap a picture of it for her Instagram.

  “I won’t put your face in it, I promise.”

  Annabel’s face fell for a second.

  “You don’t think I am pretty enough to put my face in it?”

  “No, sweetie. No, not that at all. I just didn’t want to violate your privacy. We can put your face in it.” Who is planting these terrible thoughts in my daughter’s head? When had this once confident child become so insecure?

  “No,” Annabel replied. “Let’s keep my face out of it. Just my pretty hair.” Imogen obliged and snapped the photo of the braid winding around the back of her head before helping her daughter get the rest of her things ready for school. As they prepared to head out the door, Imogen smiled when she noticed Aerin2006 liked her braid photo. She left a smiley face emoji in the comments section.

  She planned to meet Rashid for coffee before going into the office. He had promised to give her a crash course in traffic. That was specifically what she asked for in the text message she sent him.

  >>>>Could you teach me about traffic?<<<<

  >>>>U R adorable<<<<

  He was already sitting at one of the six tables in Jack’s when she arrived, thumbing through something on his iPad, which he quickly stashed away when she walked in, rising to kiss both of her cheeks and then lean in for a hug to top it off. She marveled at his use of color. Today he wore a bright yellow wool overcoat atop a navy sweater, perfectly fitting olive-green flat-front pants that hit right at his ankle and laced black brogues. Did he ever wear socks?

  He sat back down. One of the things she liked about Rashid was that he put his electronic devices away during a meeting, giving you his undivided attention, unlike Eve, who behaved as though you were an unwanted distraction keeping her away from her gadgets.

  Imogen offered to buy Rashid a macchiato, but he waved her hand away to indicate he had already ordered two for them and that they should be waiting on the counter. Once again she marveled at his efficiency. Sure enough, there they were, two perfectly foam-topped macchiatos just waiting for her to pick them up.

  “Rashid, do you know anyone at Shoppit?”

  “I do indeed. I went to Stanford with their chief technology officer.”

  “When, like yesterday?” Imogen teased. Rashid bristled and Imogen remembered it was just as rude to joke about someone being too young as it was to joke about someone being too old.

  “Six years ago, thank you very much. Anyway, he is some kind of freak kid genius.”

  “Isn’t that what you are?” Imogen asked.

  “No way! Not like this guy. Erik started Stanford when he was fourteen. He stayed there eight years, which is how I got to meet him, but in that time he got a BA and two master’s.” Imogen, who had never even gone to university, didn’t know what to say to that. “Why do you ask?” Rashid’s golden eyes looked at her with curiosity.

  “I am trying to figure out who someone is who works there. I follow her on Instagram and I like all of her pictures and she likes mine and I am just curious whose pictures I am liking.”

  Rashid nodded. “Probably Aerin Chang.”

  “Yes, Aerin2006! That’s her. Who is she?”

  “She’s the CEO over there. And you have good taste. Her Instagram is awesome, isn’t it?” Imogen nodded again.

  “Is she also, like, ten years old?” She had to stop cracking these jokes.

  “I think she graduated in 2006,” he replied. Imogen did the mental math. That made her thirty. A thirty-year-old CEO! “Also from Stanford…a couple of years before me. She’s amazing. The two of you should definitely meet.” The idea was creepy to Imogen, starting a friendship online and then moving it offline.

  “Maybe you can introduce me one of these days?”

  Rashid nodded. “Of course. You’ll get along splendidly. She loves fashion, loves designers. She has a real respect for them, not like a lot of these other e-commerce brats.” Imogen knew he was talking about Eve. “She has an eye for what works. Now, tell me why you brought me here. Was it really just to help you cyber-stalk Aerin Chang?”

  Imogen laughed and shook her head, but that was the main problem with his question. Imogen didn’t know exactly what it was that she wanted to know or what she needed from him at all.

  She heard the word “traffic” bandied about the office like it was some kind of celebrity. She knew that it meant more people were coming to their website and that was a good thing. What she didn’t understand was any of the other things Eve was constantly mentioning in relation to the traffic.

  “You do know that people teach entire classes on this, right? Sell books about it?” Rashid had a smart little twinkle in his eye.

  Imogen was happy to take his word for it.

  “I think what I want to know is, how can I sound like I know what I am talking about in a meeting about the site’s performance?”

  “Oh, darling, that’s easy. Let’s talk about increasing your conversion rate.”

  “My what?”

  “Your conversion rate. Conversion is the act of changing visitors on the site and the app into customers. It’s the most important of all the traffic components. One thing that I tell my clients, who, by the way, I charge way more than the price of a decent macchiato”—he looked at her with mock anger—“is that the longer they have someone on their site, the more likely they are to sell them things. No one wants to
feel like they have wasted their time. They want to buy something. You just need to keep their eyeballs on the screen and then make it really easy for them to check out once you have them hooked.”

  Imogen was starting to understand. “So that’s why BUY IT NOW works so well.”

  Rashid’s topknot wiggled as he nodded his head. “Exactly. It’s telling the visitor what to do. People like to be told what to do.”

  “So what suggestions can I make to get us a better conversation rate?” Imogen asked.

  Rashid sighed.

  “ ‘Conversion rate,’ my dearest, not ‘conversation rate.’ Imogen, you’re actually killing me. But since you handed Bridgett off to me and she has an incredible app idea that just might make Blast! a hell of a lot of money, I am happy to help you pro bono. Here’s what I know. Your site actually makes fulfillment, buying, really easy. You store everyone’s information. You make everything go through a single process. It’s as close to one-click shopping as you are going to get. What you could do better is identifying the fringe consumer, the one who is on the fence about making a purchase. If someone has been on the site for more than three minutes, they are thinking about buying something. How can you give them a nudge?”

  Imogen sipped her macchiato, swirling the foam around with her spoon, before lifting it to her mouth, thinking about the kind of nudge that would get her to actually buy something right then and there.

  “Ooooo, I have it,” she said a little too loudly, causing the couple at the table next to theirs to give her a disapproving stare. “We can have a coupon pop up after they have been on the website for three minutes giving them ten percent off.”

  Rashid groaned. “Nooooo. I mean, yes. A coupon is a good idea, but just a plain old coupon is boring-sauce. It’s like giving someone a blender when they want a Vitamix.”

  At least she was on the right track.

  “Think, Imogen.” Rashid stood and stretched his arms skyward, his slender fingers cracking as they spread. “How can you engage your customer? How can you make them see that buying something from your site is something they have to do?”

  Seeing. That was it. She remembered Eve in San Francisco opining on how the key to the selfie was all in the eyes.

  “We want to see your sale face!” Imogen blurted out. “Your salefie. It’s a coupon, but you get it only if you share your best salefie—your excited-about-our-sale face. You share your Glossy salefie on Instagram with the hashtag salefie and we send you a coupon. Is that even possible?”

  For a minute she thought Rashid might tackle her, he looked so excited.

  “That. Is. Perfect.”

  “Really? It’s a made-up word. Is it stupid to make up a word?” Imogen knew she thought it was stupid to make up a word.

  “The Internet is all one big made-up word,” Rashid said. “What do you think Google and Twitter are? They’re baby talk. It’s all about how you own that baby talk.” Rashid snapped his fingers on the word “own.”

  It made a lot of sense to Imogen. Still she marveled that Rashid could so easily give her something she could go into a meeting with that might just possibly impress Eve and the rest of her team. She stood up to hug him.

  “I owe you.”

  “You don’t. You came up with hashtag salefie all on your own. I just gave you a bit of a nudge. You don’t owe me at all.” He smirked as he meticulously sipped on his macchiato. “In fact, I am going to see if I can buy salefie-dot-com. We may be on to something. I think you have a website or app idea percolating around in that gorgeous head of yours too, and when it’s ready, I’ll help you build it.”

  Imogen shook her head. “I don’t. I honestly wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “You will. You know I can make you a million bucks off the smallest of ideas. The best apps are the kind that exploit some kind of inefficiency in the market. Think about Airbnb. What did they do? They found a huge inefficiency of people’s second homes not being used or their primary home not being used when they went away on vacation. They decided to help people make money on something they already owned, but didn’t know was worth anything. Does that make sense?”

  Imogen nodded.

  “I really could make an app out of anything? What if I knew someone had an inventory of something perishable that would last for only three more days. Could I try to find a way to pair those things with someone who needed them in the next few days?” she asked, thinking of that refrigerator filled with all the leftover flowers.

  “Yes, that’s exactly it,” Rashid said, rubbing his hands together like two sticks. Imogen enjoyed the way his dimples stayed put, even after his smile faded.

  “Think about it.” He tapped the side of his head as he rose and carefully replaced his yellow overcoat one arm at a time before whirling out the door and onto his next shift of meetings.

  —

  Imogen had never, ever, heard of a couple using Paperless Post for their wedding.

  But sure enough, there it was in her in-box, an emailed invite to the nuptials of Mr. Andrew Maxwell and Miss Eve Morton, taking place on the starry evening of January 15 in the grand ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. Guests were encouraged to visit Glossy.com’s website for “recommendations” on what they should wear.

  Imogen looked up from her desk to see if everyone in the office had gotten the post at the same time. She assumed they must have, given the fuss Eve had been making about the wedding around the office and the fact that they would be promoting her wedding so heavily on the website. Up and down the rows of computers the young women whispered to one another and pointed at their screens. Imogen could tell they were furiously messaging at the same time. She watched them as they undoubtedly went to the special section of the Glossy website—an entire vertical column now labeled “Wedding!”—to find out what Eve wanted them to wear. Imogen was curious herself. How did Eve envision her wedding? She clicked on the tab to find a new page subdivided into four sections: Bride, Bridal Party, Lady Guests, Gentleman Guests. She clicked Bride first. This page contained sixteen different dresses and allowed visitors to vote for their favorite. Eve promised she would take all of the votes into consideration when she was choosing her dress for the actual day. Imogen clicked the back button on the browser and went to “Lady Guests.” She shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that this section contained an unusual amount of Hervé Léger bandage dresses all in a distinctive palette of various shades of sherbet. Perfect for a winter wedding, Imogen thought with the requisite amount of sarcasm.

  As the day went on it became clear that Eve did not invite the entire office to the wedding. The hurt was apparent on the faces of the women that Eve had neglected. She had invited her personal favorites, along with the girls Imogen knew Eve found the most impressive, the ones whose parents were prominent on the New York social scene, who had fancy boyfriends or who were particularly attractive. It was easy to pick out who in the office would be attending the event. Even if they despised their boss, the ones who had gotten the invitation couldn’t hide a certain smugness, the kind that came just from being included in something you knew others had been excluded from.

  “What’d you think?” Eve leaned languidly onto Imogen’s desk. As she tucked a red curl behind her ear, Imogen noticed a new set of Frisbee-sized diamond studs, no doubt a gift from Andrew, adorning Eve’s lumpy earlobes.

  “Think of what?” She assumed Eve meant the wedding invitation, but with Eve it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for her to be referring to an email she had sent five seconds earlier.

  “My wedding invitation, silly.” Now Imogen knew this would be one of those moments when Eve played like they were two girlfriends instead of work colleagues who despised each other. Imogen had learned it was best to just start playing along. It made it end that much sooner.

  “What an ingenious idea to use the Paperless Post, Eve. I never would have thought of that. So eco-friendly of you.”

  “Wasn’t it? You k
now, that’s exactly what I was thinking too. I mean, except the truth is also that we are having the wedding so soon that picking out and then mailing all of the invitations would have just taken up too much time. Plus, I love supporting other tech companies. It makes me feel good.” She rubbed her hands on the tops of her arms to show that the feeling was something akin to warmth and fuzziness.

  Imogen nodded, dropping her gaze back to her computer, wondering how long she would need to coddle Eve about the wedding invites.

  Eve narrowed her eyes and gave Imogen a funny look. “Have you ever gotten another wedding invitation on Paperless Post?”

  “I haven’t, Eve. It was definitely one of a kind.”

  This was the right answer.

  “Yeah, it was. Although try telling Andrew that. I thought he was going to die when I told him about it. You of all people know how conservative he is.”

  Imogen nodded that she did know that about him, choosing carefully not to say anything more than that. It was as if Eve was baiting her to say something more, something personal about her long-ago ex-boyfriend that would make this conversation awkward. Imogen decided instead to switch gears.

  “Who from the office did you invite?”

  “You know, the ones I work with most closely, the ones who have been here the longest. I feel like they should have really earned the right to come to my wedding. Don’t you think?”

  To this Imogen didn’t know whether to agree with Eve or tell her how she really felt, that all of the girls should have, at the very least, been invited to the cocktail hour if they were using this wedding as some kind of de facto Glossy.com event.

  “I think it’s your wedding and you should have invited whoever you wanted to invite. Have you decided on your dress yet or are you really going to wear what the website votes for?” Imogen had the sense that this aspect of the wedding had been borrowed from a reality television show.