Speaking of Netflix, here’s John Koblin and Sapna Maheshwari of The New York Times on the company’s latest maneuver — a digital pop-up shop for goods and apparel based on their popular shows/movies:

Netflix.shop will allow the company to move faster to meet demand for items related to Netflix shows that trend on social media. “We did that pretty quickly,” Mr. Simon said of the “Bridgerton” sweatshirts, “but I think we’re talking about a matter of days when we have our next unexpected hit.”

One area where Disney has a massive advantage over all their streaming competition is the adjacent spaces to their IP — that is, they have theme parks and a huge merchandise apparatus that can both leverage and feed into their content. Netflix could try to match that, but it would be insanely expensive and take years. And it might not work as the nature of Netflix’s IP is different than Disney’s, at least right now. It’s less about franchises and blockbuster IP, and more about these cultural and in many cases, ephemeral, hits. That’s why “pop-up” shops make more sense. Powered by Shopify, no less, to get them up and running even faster, with much less overhead (and thus, risk). Smart.