Podcasts about Alan Smithson

Alan Smithson explains how humanity need to adapt and adopt artificial intelligence and realize that it is a natural form of evolution and not extinction. Alan continues to elaborate on the countless benefits that communities across the globe will encounter due to this AI future, and also how diverse it can become in terms of positively affecting several different sectors. Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com ************************ Follow us on Social. www.facebook.com/pulse95radio www.twitter.com/pulse95radio www.instagram.com/pulse95radio

In this episode of Shift AI, Alan Smithson, the co-founder of Metavrse, shares his expertise on how technology advancements and AI will significantly impact the way we work in the future. Alan discusses the need to prepare for an age where AI plays a significant role and the challenge of keeping up with its rapid advancements. He also talks about the hype surrounding AI and how the lack of regulation poses risks for ethical concerns and the potential for exploitation. __________________________________________________________________________________________ In this episode of the Shift AI podcast, we cover the following topics: The history and evolution of work and the impact of the pandemic on the way we work and the potential value of blockchain and new technologies such as XR and AI The hype surrounding AI and the lack of regulation and the potential for exploitation The challenge of keeping up with AI advancements in light of all the hype and the volume of tools that are getting created every week The importance of mentors in navigating the entrepreneurial world The future of work and how technology advancements and AI will significantly impact it The need to prepare for an age where AI plays a significant role Alan's future goal of building an education system to prepare people for what's ahead. Connect with Alan Smithson Twitter LinkedIn Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy Twitter LinkedIn Email: shift@simplyaugmented.com Learn more about Simply Augmented --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shift-ai/message

Alan Smithson: Conscious Living in the Age of AI  Alan Smithson's personal mission is to inspire and education future leaders to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way, and to help them build their businesses with websites that use Metaverse technologies such as AI, XR, and Blockchain. Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs, who want to achieve high sales and positively impact humanity! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of conscious guests such as Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,5000 episodes that have been heard by over 100 million in 190 countries. Join us as a regular listener to get money-making and impact secrets on how you can grow your business and make a massive difference for humanity faster!

Alan Smithson: Conscious Living in the Age of AI  Alan Smithson's personal mission is to inspire and education future leaders to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way, and to help them build their businesses with websites that use Metaverse technologies such as AI, XR, and Blockchain. Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs, who want to achieve high sales and positively impact humanity! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of conscious guests such as Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,5000 episodes that have been heard by over 100 million in 190 countries. Join us as a regular listener to get money-making and impact secrets on how you can grow your business and make a massive difference for humanity faster!

This week we talk to Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVRse about his journey through DJing, into tech, and everything in between. He's played the biggest clubs on the planet, and developed hardware for the biggest DJs. We look at how the state of AI and how it can benefit DJs, and why we should be kind to robots.Find Alan online at: LinkedIn/Instagram/TwitterGot feedback or suggestions for the show? Get in touch on the Once A DJ Instagram page.

We've been on quite a wild ride this season with topics ranging from the metaverse, to retail media networks, to the future of ecommerce and DTC, plus our Retail Transformers, and including special interviews and recaps of three major industry events – Grocery Shop, NRF, and Shop Talk! But now we've reached The Razor's Edge, our Season 2 finale, with special guest host Paul do Forno, Managing Director of the Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital, turning the tables on our dynamic duo to walk through the season calling out all the highlights!In this episode, Paul turns our regular hosts, Ricardo and Casey, into the show's guests and starts with a check-in on how their Top 10 Predictions for 2023 are holding up so far this year. Then he looks back through the season and asks our hosts what some of their favorites were in each of our min-series and special episodes. What were your favorites? Who was your favorite Retail Transformer? Find out how you match up to our hosts' choices! And of course, Paul can't resist but ask for hints on what's to come in Season 3!We're now standing at number 19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list – if you enjoy our show, please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we'll move our way up the Top 20! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/Meet your regular hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS2E13 The Razor's Edge - S2 Finale[00:00:00] Season 2 Finale[00:00:20] Paul do Forno: Hello, Retail Razor listeners, and welcome to Season Two Grand Finale. As you might have noticed, I am not your usual host. I'm Paul do Forno. I'm part of the leadership team at Commerce Practice at Deloitte Digital. We're one of the largest commerce consulting companies in the world, and we help everything from strategy to design to implementing platforms.[00:00:42] But today I am your guest hosts and I'm turning the tables on the Dynamic Duo interviewing them. So let's bring in these weeks guests, Ricardo and Casey. Casey, Ricardo, thank you so much for having me as your guest host for season two finale.[00:00:59] Ricardo Belmar: Hey [00:01:00] Paul, it is awesome having you here with us.[00:01:01] Casey Golden: I mean, how lucky are we to have you on the actual podcast? it's so nice to have you over here. Thanks for doing this.[00:01:10] Paul do Forno: Well, how does it feel being on the other side? Do you feel a little pressure now? I you don't know what I'm gonna ask.[00:01:16] Casey Golden: It's always a bit awkward to be your own guest, but I'm excited to answer some questions since I am usually on the side of asking questions.[00:01:25] Paul do Forno: Okay. [00:01:26] Ricardo Belmar: feeling the same way it is a little odd being, not being the one asking the questions on your own podcast. but this is gonna be fun. So I'm glad you're joining us. I'm thrilled we're turning things around and I can't wait to see how you're gonna try to trip us up here in the finale.[00:01:39] Paul do Forno: All right. All right. Well, I can't wait to dive in. So here we go. First I wanna check in with both of you. You had top 10 list of predictions this year, and I know we're not all the way through the year, but we wanna check in to see where you're at and which ones you feel that are totally on track, or which ones are totally off track.[00:02:00] So Ricardo.[00:02:01] Ricardo Belmar: this could get interesting. Good thing there's no audience to throw things at us.[00:02:05] Paul do Forno: You ready for the questions, Casey?[00:02:08] Casey Golden: Yeah, and Ricardo, I'm a good catch, but I love q and a, so I do miss having a live audience. I'm feeling pretty good, but Ricardo and I come from two different perspectives. That's why I think we're a little bit more fun to listen to. We do not agree on everything.[00:02:24] Paul do Forno: All right. All right. That's good. That's why we're here. All right. For the second part, I'm also gonna ask you about your favorite parts of the season and a few surprise questions along the way and follow up. I'm gonna test some of the things that you come back with. [00:02:39] Checking in on those 2023 predictions[00:02:39] Paul do Forno: okay, let's jump in. First question, Ricardo. Let's start with you. You each gave five prediction this year and so , which you think maybe are the long shot and out, out of those long shots, which one do you think will really come true by the end of the year and why?[00:02:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:03:00] Oh, you really went for that one, didn't you? I like 'em all though.[00:03:03] Paul do Forno: Wow. Just pick one. Let's focus on one for today.[00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: All right. I guess I'll pick one. , if I have to pick one, I guess I would have to pick the one I gave on the anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce.[00:03:15] Paul do Forno: Okay. Let's hear some more about it.[00:03:17] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, feel like that's the one that's maybe the most far out there of the predictions I did in that it's not just about retailers being the one to seriously adopt immersive tech, like AR and VR. And embracing other new technologies to get commerce in the right context in new locations. Like we talked about integrating it in your car, being in a stadium at a game or something like that.[00:03:41] But it's not just about the retailers integrating the tech. It also requires consumers to be willing to adopt these at the same time. So there's a little bit of an element of the stars aligning on this one to make it come true and work out. So I think maybe that's my long shot. I'm still sticking with it though.[00:03:58] Paul do Forno: Okay, it's gonna take a [00:04:00] little bit longer. Ca. Casey, what do you think?[00:04:02] Casey Golden: I'm completely opposite, I believe a hundred percent and anywhere commerce and contextual commerce that every single consumer touchpoint is gonna turn into a point of sale, but it is gonna be a little bit more of a long shot as far as it's gonna take longer, but I believe that it is a hundred percent there.[00:04:22] This punch in immersive has massive demand and I think it's moved a lot of builders into creating better foundational structures so that we can get interesting experiences and more virtual experiences that I think is gonna fuel that. But we really need better checkout and I think everybody in that space that's very forward and immersive shopping and this, these metaverse plays and virtual experiences, they're learning supply chain right now. And so once I think this kind of bridges, [00:05:00] there's gonna be some beautiful magic.[00:05:01] Paul do Forno: So I noticed you guys didn't say the word as part of all that. You didn't say the word omnichannel. Is [00:05:07] Casey Golden: It doesn't exist. It never has.[00:05:10] Paul do Forno: What's that?[00:05:11] Casey Golden: It doesn't exist. It never has.[00:05:13] Paul do Forno: Ah, okay.[00:05:14] Ricardo Belmar: all just commerce. I'm gonna keep saying it's just commerce. We don't need to label it omnichannel or anything because I think all that ever, I dunno. It feels like all we ended up accomplishing was confusion with that.[00:05:25] Paul do Forno: All right. No good perspectives. It I think this is the one it'll be interesting, it may take longer to get the full view, but then I think once we get closer to that, the goalposts will change again. So it will be interesting. Alright. Casey, same question to you. What's your biggest long shot and why?[00:05:46] Casey Golden: So my biggest long shot is, B N P L. I just don't feel that it's good for consumers and there will be more consumer protection initiatives around the entire entity. It's [00:06:00] bulking customers up with debt does not help your customer experience and brand relationship when that payment that might be coming at you every single month is coming because it's a branded product, it, I think it does negatively infect the brand.[00:06:15] But I understand the value of it opening up cash flow for like younger demographics and just for people in general. It does open up cash flow to buy things that you want or need but I'm very conflicted on the two sides of it. However, Apple Pay Later has now launched so that kind of throws a wrench in my biggest long shot. So, Now that Apple users can split their purchases into four interest free payments over six months without a fee, I think it might be a long shot that Affirm, After Pay, Klarna, and PayPal make it.[00:06:50] Paul do Forno: So what? What do you think Ricardo?[00:06:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah I don't know. I think, When we recorded that one and Casey went through that prediction I think the thought was, is [00:07:00] it gonna be a little bit of a blow up or explosion in terms of consumer protections, but now maybe it's gonna blow up in a different direction with Apple launching Apple Pay Later.[00:07:10] May, maybe it's more now a matter of, are the other company, like you just said in Casey are these all these other companies gonna survive doing that now that they're gonna have to compete directly with Apple on their platform[00:07:20] Casey Golden: I mean, Apple's done. Now we just need a Google one and[00:07:23] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, if Google comes out with a pay later now, then it's really gonna be done.[00:07:27] Paul do Forno: I guess, I guess I might be here in being a little bit of the counter to this. So actually the stats came out and the numbers on B N P L last year, I don't have it right in front of me, but it was multiple billions of dollars. It was the fastest growing payment channel. And so it's not a long, it's here.[00:07:47] But I think your point, Casey's a nuanced one where the effect on the brand and how it's used, that's something that I think, needs to be figured out that's [00:08:00] the concern long term, right? Like I think that buy now pay later is here for a long time. In fact, I actually first saw this and it was weird.[00:08:10] I went to Brazil for the first time in 2011, and everywhere you went, buy now, pay later was, that was just the standard way that they paid because that's the demographics that were there and that's the way they paid. And so I, especially given, some of the economic trends and how people are buying, I think this is a long-term stay.[00:08:33] The question is gonna be who and then how best to use it within the brand. That ju just my two, my 2 cents there. All right. Next question. Now that we got these long shots outta the way, Ricardo, which one for you are you most sure of and why?[00:08:53] Ricardo Belmar: Ah, okay. This, I think this one's a little easier for me to pick, cuz honestly, all you have to do is look at any of the news outlets [00:09:00] that are out there today covering tech and covering retail and just everywhere. I mean it, it's an obvious one for me. It's a prediction on generative ai. So things like, whether it's chat, g p t, dall-e two g p t four, there's the Microsoft co-pilot announcement.[00:09:13] All these things coming out. I think it was the last prediction we had in, in our list. We saved the best for last maybe, but I think this is this is one is all as close to an automatic win. I think as we're gonna get in one of these predictions, just given where it's trending is pretty much every retailer I talk to just about every account manager and field rep I talk to at Microsoft is saying the same thing, every customer is looking at this and asking, how do I use this?[00:09:36] Everybody's got a long list of use cases they wanna apply it to. They wanna understand. How to build with it, how to apply it. When we had our top retail influencers calls with Rethink Retail, it was two months in a row it was a topic that everybody wanted to talk about.[00:09:51] Everyone had something to say about it. Everyone's got an opinion about it. And they're just, I don't know, so many use cases. I mean, one of my favorite ones seeing [00:10:00] CarMax doing , where they're using the AI tools to help a customer doing research on their site to automatically summarize all the reviews on cars.[00:10:08] So instead of having to read thousands and thousands of reviews, you just ask a few questions and it gives you a summary with everything you need to know. So just coolest. And that's such a simple, if I can explain it in two sentences, you can ask the two sentences and get a summary.[00:10:21] Can't get much better than that.[00:10:23] Paul do Forno: That, that seems the most obvious one, but I, just to put you on the spot, I know you, you talked about an interesting one and, but let's talk specifically about commerce. What component of commerce do you think this would apply most? Like what area?[00:10:40] Ricardo Belmar: I think we're gonna see it apply in, in, in stages. I think initially anything related to discovery and product discovery, new ways of searching. So search will move I think from trying to think of what keyword do I use? We don't wanna search for a product ,now I can really be super descriptive.[00:10:56] I can talk about what my intent is when I wanna search for something. [00:11:00] Like just, I'm just thinking examples. Like if I'm searching for new, for apparel products instead of having to use keywords like it's, I'm searching for, jeans right, or shirts or whatever it's gonna be. I can describe how I'm gonna wear it and where I'm gonna wear it, and now as part of that search process and these tools are gonna give me different responses based on that.[00:11:18] So I think being able to apply intent and more, almost a point more emotional feeling of how I'm gonna use this product in that search. I think that's gonna be the, probably the first area where it's gonna have a big impact on commerce.[00:11:31] Casey Golden: And that's exactly what I don't agree on anything. AI is not gonna help you get dressed in the morning. I promise.[00:11:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.[00:11:44] Casey Golden: But no, I think that, Listen, I think when we're buying clothing it's emotional and I don't think we can have a non-emotional entity help us make these emotional decisions. But when it comes to function, a hundred percent, I [00:12:00] think affecting mass commerce and I don't get excited about buying another cell phone charger.[00:12:07] I need to buy some recording information like pieces. So I look like Ricardo and I have a mic and all these things. Yes, that I definitely see, like there's these ways that AI is gonna definitely impact search. I think it could for a period of time dis disrupt. Why? The only way we see things is if there's ad money behind it.[00:12:29] And I think we can get a lot better information and products teed up to us based off of function. But. Leave it to me to make sure you have the right clothes, Ricardo. Um, I think the immediate[00:12:43] Ricardo Belmar: do better than the AI[00:12:45] Casey Golden: well, yeah, we'll do much better, but I think the number one thing I'm seeing right now is managing products and uploading products into e-comm is painful and often a very manual process.[00:12:58] And so product [00:13:00] descriptions right outta the box, being able to create clear product descriptions that are interesting, compelling, and again, going back to your point, Ricardo, that will impact search. But coming up with the tags different categorizes categories for everything on there in e-comm I think will be good.[00:13:19] Uploading products, changing image sizes, being able to do some of these things more automated and painful processes I think is an immediate lift. [00:13:31] Paul do Forno: Yeah, make makes sense. That makes sense and I think there will be more stuff that we haven't even thought of and adjacent to it. It's something that's gonna fit the whole stack of everything. So just to take another example of helping the coders, right? There's all these tools to help on the coding side.[00:13:49] So the turnaround time on some of the coding and looking at coding is, it is gonna be helped. So if you start looking at your whole, and [00:14:00] you mentioned supply chain earlier, right? If you start looking at everything, if everything gets improved, 5 10% that's where that whole effect comes in.[00:14:08] So beyond just the experience part, I think it's gonna affect the whole stack.[00:14:15] Casey Golden: yeah, Canva had an update last this week. That was probably the best product update release I've ever seen. And there is generative art, there is redesigning your slides with ai. You have chat sheet bts in there. All of these solutions and all of these pieces just kind of came in, wrapped up like a present.[00:14:39] And I have to say, they've like 10 Xed my speed to create. And it did a phenomenal job. And, there's designers that are using it to create, they'll design one product and then they'll use the generative AI to create 10 more styles. And that's where I'm like, okay, now I'm getting a little bit [00:15:00] conflicted again between, I believe designers should be talented human beings that get to achieve their dreams versus being replaced.[00:15:10] So I think we'll see what kind of happens here. As of today, Italy's ban, g p t Chat, G P t. They'll come around. Everybody always does, but I think that that's kind of interesting. They feel that there are unlawfully processing people's data and privacy issues. So[00:15:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm.[00:15:28] Paul do Forno: Interesting. Yeah. So how long before we all become prompt engineers? Right. I've already seen those. I've already seen people start to publish like, Hey, I'm a prompt engineer. I'm an expert, so there you go. New roles popping up all the time[00:15:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, new roles.[00:15:47] Paul do Forno: All right. Casey, what about you? What's your sure thing prediction.[00:15:52] Casey Golden: sure thing is the explosion of CDPs. So customer data platforms, there is really [00:16:00] no excuse anymore for a customer to have of a bad experience with your brand. Not being able to produce like basic functional care to shoppers. Is unacceptable. And the main reason that we still have this is because a lot of the customer experience and customer support is fragmented and none of that data is really available to anybody that needs it.[00:16:26] It's available to everybody who doesn't need it in a lot of the time. Like when the customer is with you and you need it, they don't have access. And so I think that having CDPs essentially come in and start pulling all of this data together so that everybody has one point system, whether or not it's checking on an order, which hopefully , AI's gonna take care of.[00:16:48] You don't need to do that anymore. But we're gonna have different database systems to be able to pull all this customer information together and really be able to craft more around the consumer. [00:17:00] And I think that this is just gonna cause more of an extinction of traditional CRMs over maybe the next five years.[00:17:07] The way we think of a CRM, the way we, the box we put it in, I think it's, not gonna be there anymore. And so, the CDP is becoming mission critical for a company I believe this year needs to enter and see essentially how it's gonna be deployed over the next, like 18 to 24 months. But I don't see a company being able to operate in 2024 without a C D P.[00:17:37] Paul do Forno: Well, that's a great commercial for my C D P group, but, uh, but let, let me challenge you on that, of the one that you want this to happen earlier, knowing, especially some of the big enterprise brands that we work with, some of the challenges that they have of just tying all the [00:18:00] different systems. It's one thing if it, if you're dealing with a direct to consumer, one brand, smaller when you get into acquisitions and a holding company that owns all these different retailers, bringing 'em together, CDP is not easy and trying to get it.[00:18:15] Or they might have a version, kind of a C D P here, kind of c d p there. How do you coordinate it all together and so, I a hundred percent agree on this might, you might have jumped a question like, this is what you want to have as to, cuz this is harder. This ends up being a lot harder in my experience to get adoption earlier just because of all of the change management, all the different things that are out there.[00:18:44] But I a hundred percent agree they people need to go to this.[00:18:47] Casey Golden: Well, I think you're right. I mean, it can be, it can be a lot more complicated. It's not in a lot of other companies best interest to want to integrate with your C D P, [00:19:00] and so I think that, there's gonna be a lot of change management there, but the way I see it is consumers are going to gain more and more and more.[00:19:11] Protection over their rights to their data. And if your GDPR compliant, like they already have more rights than we can service today. And so this is going to, it's going to be mandatory whether or not it's executed well or at a hundred percent. I just don't think that we can really go into next year without making sure that you're operating in compliance because compliance is gonna be, is already moving faster than the software companies.[00:19:45] Paul do Forno: What do you think Ricardo?[00:19:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I mean I definitely agree in principle and the need, right? And the want. I'm thinking about your point and Paul about how it's not easy necessarily, right? Especially the larger the organization, the more potential [00:20:00] disconnected systems there are that need to be connected to create that c d P.[00:20:04] I think it's doable. I work with some partners that are in this space as well. And I think they're doing a good job at something where, again it's where you wanna plug in the AI models into it to help with some of that.[00:20:13] So I think it's a doable thing, it may be one of those where when we're looking at it at the end of the year maybe it's not complete for some of the largest organizations and it's still in progress. But I think the, I think maybe Casey's point is, it as everyone moves to this that want and need is going to cause some action, right.[00:20:30] And people are gonna start doing things about it and moving in that direction. So even if they don't have it fully deployed and ready I, I think it, it's a valid point. And I, think from a prediction point of view, yeah. It means people are gonna be trying to leverage a C D P as much as they can by the end of the year.[00:20:47] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, I think really they're gonna make the purchase. I think last year, 640 billion was spent on customer experience software. They all need a c D P to power. Everything is [00:21:00] gonna need the c d P to power customer experiences. But we kind of have to start with where our core is. And so I think if I had to deploy monies or say, what's a sure thing, you're gonna need one and you, the sooner the better.[00:21:18] Paul do Forno: Awesome, Casey. Thank you for that. You just, I just, you just recorded my commercial for me that it's gonna be my pre roll intro to our CDP presentations, but let's move on. All right. I got one for you, for your other four predictions. Which ones do you think you most want to actually come to life?[00:21:39] Right? And you wanna see go big. So Casey, let's start with you.[00:21:44] Casey Golden: I want loyalty programs to mean something again. I think that there's a lot of emphasis on loyalty programs right now, and I've seen a lot of companies scaling back rewards at the same time and taking away common [00:22:00] perks. And so I'd really like to just see this loyalty program just facilitate into something that's actually going to build loyalty, not a marketing campaign. [00:22:14] I think that this is the moment where it could really be a differentiator in the brand, the customer experience, but if we keep diluting it or disrupting them, like it's just not, it seems more marketing than it is actually provide any services. And so, I think that this is a place where there's gonna be a lot of movement. And I see, anybody who's scaling back rewards I think that they're gonna have a negative impact onto their business.[00:22:46] And I think loyalty programs are just gonna really start meaning something interesting from access to product first. Access to buy at a discount, or even shop sale first. I think the loyalty programs [00:23:00] could turn into something really meaningful and have some really interesting perks that haven't really been the point.[00:23:07] Maybe not points, you know?[00:23:09] Paul do Forno: So, so Casey, is this part of your, your favorite hotel chain? Making sure you get that nice omelet and premium breakfast [00:23:17] Casey Golden: All right [00:23:18] Paul do Forno: of the old bagel.[00:23:19] Casey Golden: yeah. So like I get, you know, they, they put a little goldfish in my room and they make sure that Mr. Darcy's there. I don't expect the rest of the retail industry to be able to compare to the way that I might be treated at a hotel, or you might be treated at a hotel. But I do feel that there's an opportunity, if that's the top, why is the bottom like 10% off your next coffee after you buy a hundred? , what does it take to get a reward, like 50,000 points [00:24:00] for a dollar off your next order? , come on, let's do something. And I think that this is the moment where everybody's been talking about loyalty, whether or not they're adding more, taking it away. And there's a lot of loyalty programs out there, and I think that we're gonna get a, it's gonna turn into an actual program, not just about, pricing.[00:24:25] It's not just about discounts. I think it can be a lot more, and I think even mass merchants are gonna find something more than a discount.[00:24:32] Paul do Forno: Okay, Ricardo.[00:24:34] Ricardo Belmar: Ooh. So for me I would have to say it's that prediction had about automation in, in stores for frontline workers. Over the years, what I think there's always a lot of predictions around what's gonna change for store teams , years back or sort of really only talked about that in the context of better training for employees.[00:24:52] But I think now in, in recent years since the pandemic we're, we have a different perspective on what those store teams are doing and, and how they [00:25:00] work. And now that with, with labor shortages and things for retailers, I think there's more of a view of you have to actually make this environment better.[00:25:07] You've gotta provide the right tools that aren't intended to necessarily replace people in the store, but it's intended to make them. Make their jobs more efficient, more effective, more productive, hopefully getting rid of a lot of the annoying tasks that we force onto store teams to, that they have to take care of, but they keep them away from customers.[00:25:27] So I, I think we'll finally start to see some meaningful things done here with real deployments of technologies that , are having an impact. And I think with an end goal of trying to really make that environment so it's not just a job, but it's more about creating a career path where you might even, finally start looking at those em employee roles as not all being equal in that, some folks on your store team may have different skills and you need to actually take advantage of that in the sense that, , give them things they can do that are built on, [00:26:00] on those skills so that some of those store associates might have a different role than others.[00:26:04] And that's okay. That's a good thing because that helps create those career paths. So I think that's gonna be the one that I really wanna see go big.[00:26:13] Casey Golden: Thank you for amplifying the real retail heroes, Ricardo. I mean, Paul, if I bring this up, it's a sales pitch, so I don't talk about frontline workers very much on here, but I just, if you're moving forward, I think we just need to, to bring our people with us.[00:26:34] Paul do Forno: Yeah. And, it's a fascinating area in fact, I noticed at NRF, if you walk the floor, some of the biggest booths were actually targeted towards the frontline industry. I was actually surprised right at the front door. So some friends of mine, actually, startups that are now massive, and I, I know we're working with some fascinating, very large grocery retailers that to [00:27:00]automate, when they get into work, how can they prioritize their tasks, and also really interestingly, things change so much. Some, you know, there's a storm coming in h how do you rally the troops very quickly and things like that. So I, I think we're just at, at a tipping point of finding ways to really drive and empower the, frontline worker. So ,exciting.[00:27:23] I agree with that one. That will be really good.[00:27:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.[00:27:27] Looking back across the whole season[00:27:27] Paul do Forno: Okay, now let's step back and look at the season as a whole. You had two mini series, I'll call them. Both were based on live recordings, one at Grocery Shop and one at N R F. Now, usually we're doing, you're recording kind of like this virtually, so, talk about how it was to be live and, , talking live with, the people right in front of you.[00:27:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll, I'll jump in on this one. Cause unfortunately Casey wasn't able to to join me on, on, on those. But you know, it was, um, [00:28:00] I know we, we[00:28:01] Casey Golden: I'm gonna be at grocery shop. I'm like literally at the store grocery shopping. I've never been to that show.[00:28:08] Ricardo Belmar: I know, I know. But you're right, it is di it is different though because you, you get a little it feels a little more authentic. Maybe you get a little bit more dynamic reactions when you're seeing someone face-to-face and in person versus just seeing them in a little video square on the screen.[00:28:22] So, so there is that. I think that creates a different excitement level from, from guests on the show when you're live versus remote. And I think that really comes out right in both, in both series, the grocery shop one and the NRF ones.[00:28:33] Paul do Forno: Cool. All right. All right. I'd have to ask you about your special guest host and crossover companion at nrf. That that, that was kind of interesting.[00:28:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. So, special shout out to Jeff Roster, host of This Week In Innovation podcast. We did a, crossover there. He's been with us as one of our esteemed Retail Avengers from them the first season where we like to refer to him as the analyst. So Jeff and I decided to team up a little bit at N R F and see what can we do[00:29:00] to do this in person.[00:29:01] And it was interesting experience because, it's a little different than when I did a grocery shop, you know, grocery shop, shop talk. They're, they're good at providing you an entire facility with recording equipment in a dedicated room that you can use. N R F is a little more complicated and that, that we didn't technically qualify to, to use their facilities for that.[00:29:20] So we kind of had to figure it out for ourselves and, and, and understand, okay, what, what do we need to, what equipment do we need? And, and then of course the biggest challenge is figuring out, well, where are we gonna do this? And we were lucky. We had our friends and fans of the show at Avanade allowed us to use their lounge space as our mobile recording studio.[00:29:36] For both Jeff and I think that was a new experience. We learned a lot from that and, and hopefully upped our podcast game to do more of these live in-person recordings that way.[00:29:45] Paul do Forno: Gotcha. So question. am I an honorary Avenger since I was there in the clubhouse? In the Clubhouse case?[00:29:52] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. Yep.[00:29:53] Paul do Forno: the clubhouse,[00:29:55] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Right. That, that, that's why you get invited to guest, host, come on.[00:29:58] Paul do Forno: Woo. [00:30:00] Alright, so question for you, Casey. What interview stood out to you? The most, both at Grocery Shop and nrf.[00:30:08] Casey Golden: So, both of which I missed. So the, the episode with Ron and Vicki, it really stood out at N R F that it is, it is absolutely something magical when we're together in, in real life. And I think that those, there's nothing that can compare to everybody being, having that energy and bringing it all to the same table and having these great conversations.[00:30:35] So I mean, it was something where I didn't tune out. I was listening to it and I think that it just brings like a very different dynamic to podcasts. But I mean, it goes to show we have really talented people in this space that are so passionate about retail. And so the Ron and Vicki episode just, you know, moved right up to my top as the most memorable.[00:31:00][00:31:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I, I have to say on, on that one too, I mean, o one of the things that worked so great with that, I mean, we, we didn't plan anything in advance for, for that one. We were all, all four of us were at the Retail ROI Super Saturday event that we were, we were hosting at the Microsoft office.[00:31:16] And right at the end of the day when everything was wrapping up, we said, why don't we sit down and just record a quick 15 minute conversation, just on some thoughts about what we, what we experienced in the day, kinda what we were hoping to see at nrf. And then of course, we got so into it, it turned into 50 minutes, not 15 ... so we went a little bit longer.[00:31:32] Paul do Forno: Wow. That's great. So what, what did you think Casey, about that.[00:31:38] Casey Golden: So like, I mean, Ron Thurston, I'm like a super fan. We'll just say that I am a super fan and Vicki Cantrell is, is phenomenal. So, I mean, I wish I, I wish I could have been there. It was just really special and Gabriella, what was it? Gabriella Bach from Rethink Retail. She was filming the video [00:32:00] for [00:32:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. She recorded the video for us. [00:32:02] Casey Golden: walking around in that tiny room with her video way longer than she was supposed to.[00:32:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, she, she was really re a real good I I don't even know what to say you, cause we talked, she heard us talking about wanting to do it and said, Hey, do you guys want me to record the video for that, that you can use? I don't, I don't mind doing it. So, yeah. We're only gonna be 15 minutes or so.[00:32:20] Oh, sure. No problem. And she's sitting there holding all the video equipment and this, and you can see in the video, this was such a tiny conference room that we ended up picking and she's trying to kind of move around all of us to get the right angles in this. She had to change batteries midway through it and then ran outta battery power cause we went so long.[00:32:38] So that was, that was definitely something.[00:32:39] Paul do Forno: Cool. Alright. So you definitely have to keep doing more of those in the future.[00:32:45] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, oh, for sure. So, so stay tuned. We, we, we have one of very much like that coming from Shop Talk that we just did.[00:32:51] All those Retail Transformers were more than meets the eye![00:32:51] Paul do Forno: Awesome. All right, now let's talk about one of your fun series within a series, so to speak, [00:33:00] the retail transformer series. You started the series in series one, but it really took off with this season with four special retail transformation episodes. But honestly, you could have called it both grocery shop and NRF series the same, couldn't you?[00:33:15] Casey Golden: Yes, true. I mean, we're all essentially Transformers. That's why we brought them on the show.[00:33:23] Paul do Forno: I, I think Casey was just about to go. Transformers.[00:33:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Yep. Stealing my line there.[00:33:32] Casey Golden: I'm like[00:33:33] Paul do Forno: That's what we were [00:33:34] Casey Golden: playing my composure.[00:33:37] Paul do Forno: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That we're, we're supposed to have yeah, we're professional here. All right. Okay. Back, back to the story here. So which one stood out the most for you, Casey?[00:33:50] Casey Golden: So, my favorite Retail Transformer during that this series was Brian Dove with Commerce Hub. We could have, [00:34:00] that podcast could have gone on for hours. Literally I would've been fine if Ricardo stopped record, and I just continued talking to Brian for the rest of the day. His approach is really compelling.[00:34:15] He's solving. Solving supply chain is probably one of the ugliest and most complex sites of the business. And making changes in supply chain are like, they're, they're like complete, they're not even a heart transplant. It's a complete nervous system transplant. And, just think that our supplies, chains need the most transformation and it's just hard, ugly work.[00:34:41] You don't get a lot of rainbows and sunshines and like glitter doing things in supply chain. It's waking up in the morning, day in, day out, doing the stuff that nobody else wants to do. And I think he came out with a very his approach is incredible and I think that we're [00:35:00] just gonna see more drop shipping directly from manufacturers than managing their own distribution and, and selling inventory in and third party logistics warehouses.[00:35:11] This. Piece of supply chain that is part of Commerce Hub. They're only like a fraction of what could be. But I think for, for what he's done and what they're doing now and where they're going, he is my top re Retail Transformer that stood out during that series.[00:35:34] Paul do Forno: Wow. I, I can't have my guys listening to this podcast because now before you're talking up the c d p guys, now my supply chain guys is, see, we're we're more important than everybody else.[00:35:46] Casey Golden: Wants to work with me. Paul,[00:35:47] Paul do Forno: I know. Geez. I, I dunno how, what, what about us? Come on. No. Yeah. Hundred percent.[00:35:56] Casey Golden: there's so many angels in this space that I [00:36:00] just feel like a lot of, a lot of it, the attention goes to the marketers. In general, and I just feel like marketing is just not retail. It takes so much to make that product[00:36:17] Paul do Forno: And honestly in the last couple years, right? I think people got, oh, all we have to do is just drop ship stuff and things just show up and[00:36:25] it, you know,[00:36:26] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah. It's magic,[00:36:28] Paul do Forno: and nobody has to make profit off of it. Now, the real world, oh damn, we've got a sources. And to scale it, you actually have to do it profitably, right?[00:36:38] And so now this, we had a little bubble of this magic, every, all this funding and these tools that made, it, enabled all of this to look like it didn't, it was super easy and anybody could do it, but now the real vendors are coming out. And, and so you really have to focus on back to the basics, right? [00:37:00] And, and how to tie all these together.[00:37:02] Casey Golden: I agree.[00:37:03] Paul do Forno: So, Ricardo, how about you?[00:37:05] Ricardo Belmar: So continuing on on that theme you just brought up there, Paul. So, so my, one of my favorites is the, the retail transformer we did with Polly Wong. Cuz she reinforced something that both Casey and I, I think absolutely loved when she said it. I, I think we almost had to stop recording to regain some composure from, from the comment that she just so casually dropped about how you can't have a profitable, business when you're only focused on acquisition as a fact.[00:37:30] And she just rolled that phrase out so matter of factly, like it was just the most fundamental thing that everybody had been lost on. That one to me to kind of set the tone for the whole rest of the recording on that one. Cause that was pretty early on. I think that was just gold. When she brought that up and, you know, we, we had been wanting to do some direct to consumer focus episodes, so Polly gave us a chance to talk about how is D T C really moving forward and bringing it back to this idea of profitability.[00:37:58] How do you shift from customer acquisition [00:38:00] focus to actually building customer loyalty, maintaining that community of customers. And, she, I just love how she gave us , this picture of, all these different ways and methods that those brands are now marketing to consumers that, that kind of brought things back.[00:38:14] Like when she mentioned, print catalogs where a as if they're the brand new thing that DTC brands were doing and being successful at it. I think that was, that was just something I don't think anybody who was listening expected to hear that. And that, that, I just love that one.[00:38:28] Casey Golden: I agree. I think everything that was old is new again. It is that, it is this moment of back to the basics. I think Facebook essentially broke our foundation for digital. It created this false foundation for digital, let's say that. And so now that companies are really pulling back into, I don't want to rely on Facebook ads, and now I'm not even getting that eight x or 12 x or 30 x, I'm like, [00:39:00] lucky if I can get a two x return right now. Because of all of the different changes, I think we're going back to just building better with the newer technologies. And a lot of this is foundational, it's just a new foundation for digital.[00:39:16] That's just, I think we too many people over overbuilt on relying on a, the Facebook platform and ads.[00:39:26] Paul do Forno: Hey, I think omnichannel is back.[00:39:30] Casey Golden: Say that word, unified commerce. If you need to use a word unified,[00:39:34] Ricardo Belmar: you go. There you go. Unified commerce.[00:39:37] Paul do Forno: That's probably, that should be another, that should be another podcast. The, the Battle. Battle of Semantics.[00:39:44] Casey Golden: Yeah,[00:39:44] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, there we, there we go. [00:39:46] Casey Golden: no consum. What is it? I just saw it. Composable commerce.[00:39:51] Ricardo Belmar: right. Yeah.[00:39:53] Paul do Forno: The, the battle of the, the terms. All right.[00:39:56] Ricardo Belmar: there.[00:39:56] Paul do Forno: All right. So[00:39:57] Casey Golden: it's a dictionary.[00:39:58] Love those "Special" episodes...[00:39:58] Paul do Forno: now that wasn't the [00:40:00] only topical series you had. You also had a special episode. We already talked about one, your predictions episode, but you also had an interesting one with Andy Laudato from NRF beginners and of course the holiday special guests from Square and others.[00:40:15] How did you come about with those.[00:40:18] Casey Golden: Well, I mean, speaking of the holiday season, we knew we wanted to make a holiday themed episode, but you know, every retail podcast seems to do this and focuses on predicting retail sales, right? And so we wanted to do something different. We brought together Bridget John's founder of to and from, to share her perspective on what customers were actually shopping for gifts.[00:40:44] And what inspired them. And then we added Roshaun from Square to share their recent survey report on what retailers were doing to gear up for the holiday. So we really felt like our holiday episode delivered perspectives on both [00:41:00] sides of the equation from the retailer and the consumer.[00:41:03] Instead of focusing on the number, we really wanted to focus on actually what's happening in this shopping experience and this thought process coming into holiday and how retailers could use that information to make their season more successful and hit those numbers that everybody's projecting. And I found it very much more insightful, really learning from the sides of Roshan, from Square and Bridget from To and From.[00:41:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's what we really call cutting through the clutter.[00:41:36] Paul do Forno: Interesting. Okay. All right. What about the NRF for Beginner's episode?[00:41:42] Ricardo Belmar: So, so that one, we wanted to do something special leading up to N R F. Obviously, we gotta call it our industry's biggest moment of the year, right? It's the biggest show. So we knew we had to do something as a retail podcast, but lucky enough for us, Andy reached out to me and said, Hey, I got a great idea for a podcast episode.[00:41:57] Let's talk about what. Beginners to NRF [00:42:00] need to know by and, and le leveraging the experience of those of us who've been there for so many years and years. So we thought, oh, this is a brilliant idea. Yeah, no, nobody's ever talking about that. Everyone always talks about N R F on the assumption that everyone knows what it is and knows what they're doing when they get there.[00:42:14] But the fact is every year, right, they're always beginners that have, have never been to N R F before. So let, let's focus on that. So, off we went. Andy came on. We, we highlighted, you know, how does a newbie to the show tackle it? What are the, the, the, the secret things you, you need to know that nobody really ever shares or tells you that you wished you knew by the time you got to the end of the show.[00:42:34] And everybody got to really benefit from all of Andy's multitude of, of years of NRF wisdom.[00:42:39] Paul do Forno: Yeah. So what, what'd you think Casey?[00:42:41] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I am still an NRF newbie, I feel, even though I've been there most of my career. Cause there's, based off of how you go there and what contexts are you a vendor? Are you on the buying side? That changes throughout our career. [00:43:00] So you may have been a buyer for 10 years, but then you're going to n r F as a vendor for the first time.[00:43:07] And the tables turn, the experience is different. And yet, I think we're kind of all newbies because I'm going as a vendor. But then each year you are changing what that means, you know, like, Not everybody has the Microsoft booth or like the Salesforce booth. And so, for everybody else, I think that it is pretty interesting on aligning expectations and like strategy for some of these companies that are coming in on the vendor side for the first time to maximize and, and even just new people coming in to go shopping.[00:43:46] You know, it's a big floor.[00:43:48] Paul do Forno: Yeah, that, that probably would be pretty different if you were a buyer. I'm sure everybody wanted you to come to their event and take you out for dinner and everything. And then you're on the other side and you're like, oh crap, [00:44:00] I've got, [00:44:00] Casey Golden: Anybody. [00:44:01] Paul do Forno: get some attention. The hunted from the hunted, right? Like[00:44:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.[00:44:07] Paul do Forno: it's a little bit different.[00:44:09] Okay. Alright. Gonna bring this home. Now with this one, one of the things I like about what you did this season was the introduction of the idea of new segments within each episode and your first one is what you guys call Retail Razor Data Blades, which you brought in a specialist for, right?[00:44:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So, and again, we, we didn't wanna make yet another retail podcast. I mean, there's like, what, over a hundred out there right now, have lost track. So we wanna do something unique that provides a value, not just to the retail tech community that, at the end of the day, right. Both Casey and I are part of right now, but also to retailers who are getting bombarded with information and that you realistically need some guidance on how to sift through all of that, all that data that gets published out there.[00:44:55] And like we're always saying, we want to cut through the clutter of that noise.[00:44:59] Casey Golden: [00:45:00] Yeah. And we worked with our friends over at True Rating and Georgina Nelson, their phenomenal c e o to leverage all the rich data that they've gone through. Their retailer customers from survey questions that they ask at the point of sale to offer our listeners and viewers some insights into what consumers are actually doing.[00:45:21] And not doing with their purchasing habits.[00:45:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so we introduced this segment. We had it on I think three times this season, and we're, we're definitely gonna bring this one back next season. Big shout out to Georgina was so good at recording this with us when, when she was just days away from her baby's due date. So it was just a amazing that we were able to get that in.[00:45:40] We, we kept joking that we might not get these recordings done in time, but we managed to pull it off. So that was amazing.[00:45:47] Paul do Forno: All [00:45:47] Casey Golden: was prepared to have laptop with her. You know, like when we say she's a phenomenal Georgina, like props to this woman. She's, she's a great leader.[00:45:58] Coming up next season?[00:45:58] Paul do Forno: Wow. That's commitment. [00:46:00] Okay. Now for next year, next season, do you guys have a theme yet?[00:46:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. After season one focused on digital transformation and the impact of transformation on the people in the retail business, this season, our focus was, the evolution of channel operations in the retail business. That's why we started the season with a big one, two punch with the Metaverse and retail media networks.[00:46:32] Ricardo Belmar: and if you think about all the retail transformers we brought in this season, we really kept that focus. We started out with, with Alan Smithson to dive deeper into Metaverse what he was doing, building The Mall in the metaverse to, the episode I mentioned where we had Polly on. Talking about that.[00:46:45] And then, again, the one Casey mentioned with Bryan Dove from Commerce Hub we really drove into the future of e-commerce on that one and marketplaces. So for next season, where are we taking it? We're gonna try to focus a little bit more on some of these themes, a little, little bit sharper, things like anywhere [00:47:00] commerce and immersive commerce.[00:47:01] I think look at how that's happening with this in the middle of this backdrop that I, I think of as a, a back to basics kind of mood in retail.[00:47:10] Paul do Forno: Ah, back to my supply chain guys. All right. Yes, we need them, but, I got all the cool shows and I guess we gotta give them some work. All right, so let's tie in. You know, your predictions there, but what exactly do you mean? Back to basics.[00:47:29] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I think we, we really need to sort of acknowledge that retailers are focusing this year on, on how to get better at the business of retailers, retailing. So, past few years through the pandemic, right? What, what, what did retailers end up seeing? There's a lot of rapid growth in some specific areas for many retailers, but because a lot of it happened so fast, and I, I think we have to admit right, faster than most retailers were used to change and, and adopting new things.[00:47:55] So that meant that, they, the focus was just get it out there to deliver those [00:48:00]experiences for, for the consumers, for what consumers wanted at whatever the cost was because it just, it had to be done and it had to be done fast. So now most retailers, I think are figuring out, we did these things, maybe not in the best way we could have done it, so let's optimize it a little bit.[00:48:15] Let's make sure that we take out as much of the cost as we can, but c but, but still be able to do these things. How do we inject some profitability into it? We've got all these crazy new tools like the Generative AI that, mentioned in the predictions. We talked about the automation for, for the store teams.[00:48:31] How do we still inject those things? But let's not do it in the, in the crazy, do it at all costs way that we were forced into the last few years. Let's do it in a more methodical way that we know is gonna maintain some profitability. We're wa we're watching, we don't know what the outcome is gonna be, right?[00:48:48] In terms of shopping trends or consumers gonna keep buying at the pace they've been buying, are they going to slow down because of inflation? Are they gonna go back to saving more versus spending with all this [00:49:00] backdrop, how do we keep these things going? We can't take back any of the new things and capabilities we introduced cause consumers will, will find another brand, right, if we take these things away.[00:49:08] So we have to find ways to keep optimizing and keep doing them, but at least, the way I like to look at it is you can't just cost cut your way to success. You still have to invest in the future. And even though that near term investment is hopefully something that's gonna return you a, a cost reduction in the future, but you have to do it in a smart way.[00:49:26] So I think those are the kinds of things that, we're looking at these trendy things like immersive commerce and everywhere commerce and retailers, still need to do that, but it matters now how you do it more so than it did before.[00:49:39] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm a hundred percent on this is going to be the time for reality. And we're gonna be spending a lot more time on. The, the reality of, of where our retail is today to build, to be able to adopt some of the new technology at scale. It's just we spend so much [00:50:00] time on marketing and acquisition and we saw that it just cost us too much money and a lot of turn.[00:50:07] And so focusing on retention and stable systems and being able to go ahead and say like, listen, why are there 400 messages a day of a customer looking for their package? Okay, that's not a customer service opportunity. That's an opportunity to fix it. Like this is like adding these things to plug problems and band-aids.[00:50:34] We've got to solve the actual problems. And I think that that's, everything that I've seen right now has been. I have, we have customers. We're gonna focus on keeping them, and we need to go ahead and make sure that we're ready for the next five years of retail. Otherwise, we, I don't know if we'll be here or we're going to lose our market share.[00:50:57] Paul do Forno: And I'll, and I'll just put a exclamation mark [00:51:00] on that. Like all I'm hearing is optimize. How do we optimize, how do we use what we have? We spend a ton of investments over the past couple years. How do we use 'em well, right? Like that's what I keep hearing. That's what, that's what my colleagues are hearing.[00:51:16] So I, I think the more that they can do better, and guess what the P word. You gotta be profitable, right? How do we optimize and be for profit and, and more so than ever, especially with the uncertainty on the economics and that, I think it's just gonna be more important. [00:51:36] Okay. One last thing I want to know.[00:51:39] Any new segments you're introducing? Like the Retail razor Data Blades.[00:51:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, since that's that's been pretty popular. So we are looking at adding more of those. So for example one, we're gonna bring a, a unique perspective to answer the, the hot questions of the day from an academic's viewpoint. I think that's gonna be maybe eye-opening for some folks based on, on what kind of [00:52:00] responses we, we hear there and what kind of discussion we have.[00:52:02] But I think it'll be a unique independent viewpoint people aren't used to hearing necessarily. Then another one we're thinking about doing is a segment that'll focus on retail leadership qualities. There's been some interesting news media reports lately talking about how there seems to be a shortage of, of CEOs in retail and a shortage of, of quality executives.[00:52:22] So we're gonna dig in a little bit, I think in, in a new segment there and bring in some folks to. Give some tips on, you know, what are those leadership roles? What are those skills that those leaderships, what traits do they need to have to really be successful in, in retail that maybe not everyone has developed or, or needs to develop better.[00:52:39] Paul do Forno: I, I think back to what I just said, the P word, we need the CEOs driving the profitability, right?[00:52:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah.[00:52:47] Casey Golden: Yeah, I think they're gonna come from unexpected places. You know, we've had a lot of executives that have been running the top for 25 years. I think retail in general it's been, [00:53:00] leadership has been plugged. I know a lot of VPs and SVPs that had their jobs for 28 years, they're not going anywhere and they didn't let anybody rise through.[00:53:09] And so there's a lot of talent out there that could probably hop some steps and really make some big changes and some positive profitable changes at these companies. And I'm excited to have those, those sessions cuz there's a lot of untapped talent out in this industry. Nobody's in this industry to get rich, right?[00:53:31] Like we are all here on pure fricking passion. Cause it would be a lot easier working some other industries than it is in this space. We're here with like committed love.[00:53:42] Paul do Forno: Yes. Yes. So all of that's pretty interesting. So any hints for the expert speakers to come?[00:53:50] Casey Golden: We can't give everything away on this episode I'm gonna leave that on on Ricardo if he wants to add any spoilers.[00:53:57] Ricardo Belmar: I think we can afford to make people wait and [00:54:00] see and, and make it a surprise.[00:54:01] Paul do Forno: Well, maybe you guys can give us a preview trailer soon and, you know, a teaser.[00:54:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Be in the lookout for that.[00:54:08] Paul do Forno: All right. Well guys, thank you so much for inviting me on the show to guest host and be an honorary Avenger. It's been a year, Casey and Ricardo since we saw y y you know, the comeback at The Shop Talk last year. And we just got done another Shop Talk. But Ricardo, I didn't see you. I, I, I tried to[00:54:27] Ricardo Belmar: don't know how we missed each other, so, so[00:54:29] Paul do Forno: I know[00:54:29] it was crazy. But thank you. I had a lot of fun and looking forward to next year.[00:54:36] Casey Golden: Thank you so much, Paul. I loved having you on the show and we'll work on that honorary Avenger title.[00:54:42] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. I mean, this is a great, fantastic experience. We can't wait to have you back on the show again soon.[00:54:47] Paul do Forno: All right, thanks guys.[00:54:49] ​[00:54:49] Show Close[00:54:49] Ricardo Belmar: We'll give a big thanks out to all of our Retail Razor Show fans this season. Casey, I think that means this show[00:55:00] for that matter, this whole season is a wrap now.[00:55:02] Casey Golden: Yeah. If you enjoyed our show this season, please consider giving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute. And if you'd rather watch us instead of listening, subscribe to our YouTube channel and like, and comment there's a new season out there too.[00:55:23] And of course, if you wanna know more about what we talked about today, including a full transcript of each episode look at the show notes for handy links to more deets. I'm your cohost, Casey Golden.[00:55:34] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to connect with us and share your thoughts on this season, follow us on Twitter at Casey c Golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter, at Retail Razor, on LinkedIn for the latest updates. And stay tuned for a season three trailer like Paul was asking us for.[00:55:50] Coming soon. We promise, it'll be worth the wait. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar.[00:55:55] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:55:56] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail [00:56:00]if you cut through the clutter. Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show.

Alan Smithson: Conscious Learning in the Metaverse Alan Smithson's personal mission is to inspire and education future leaders to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way. Alan is focused on how every website will use Metaverse technologies to create platforms for the future of human communication, collaboration, culture and commerce. Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs, who want to achieve high sales and positively impact humanity! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of conscious guests such as Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,5000 episodes that have been heard by over 100 million in 190 countries. Join us as a regular listener to get money-making and impact secrets on how you can grow your business and make a massive difference for humanity faster!

Alan Smithson: Conscious Learning in the Metaverse Alan Smithson's personal mission is to inspire and education future leaders to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way. Alan is focused on how every website will use Metaverse technologies to create platforms for the future of human communication, collaboration, culture and commerce. Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs, who want to achieve high sales and positively impact humanity! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of conscious guests such as Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,5000 episodes that have been heard by over 100 million in 190 countries. Join us as a regular listener to get money-making and impact secrets on how you can grow your business and make a massive difference for humanity faster!

Alan Smithson co-invented the world's first touchscreen DJ system called 'Emulator'  - an award winning piece of performance kit used by some of the top DJs on the global dance music circuit. In a twist of fate, the company was taken from him the night his pitch on Dragon's Den for it aired. Since Emulator, Alan has built a company to make XR experiences more easily available to anyone, anywhere in the world. MetaVRse is a proprietary, code-optional web platform that makes it easy to create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly. In this episode of the StartWell Podcast, you'll hear from Alan's career history and get a sneak peak into the world's largest virtual shopping mall which his company built using their web platform that already has some interesting tenants like Starburst's Juicyverse space.

I sit down with futurist, inventor and founder, Alan Smithson, to explore the fascinating world of AI and the metaverse. We talked about the metaverse and its associated technologies and how AI is changing the landscape for virtual reality and augmented reality. Alan shares his vision for the future across many vectors, and he provides practical guidance for founders and brands thinking about how to incorporate the metaverse into their strategies. From blockchain to replicators in every home, Alan shares his insights on the next frontiers of technological advancement and their impact on the way we live and work. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that will inspire and inform! Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (3:16) What is the Metaverse? (6:05) Defining XR, AR, VR and MR (7:57) Using AI to to map the world's interiors (11:15) Where are we on the hype cycle curve? (15:53) Age of abundance or dystopic future? (19:27) Chat-GPT and education (24:41) TikTok spying on Americans (26:05) Replicators in every home? (27:55) The future of energy (32:23) What's governments' role? (35:54) What does MetaVRse do? (38:06) Metaverse real estate (40:18) How should brands get started with the metaverse? (42:26) What's happening at Meta? (44:40) The lightning round Guest contact info: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/ https://metavrse.com/ https://themall.io/ Further reading: https://alan-smithson.medium.com/practical-guide-to-ai-in-the-metaverse-583020bbe61f https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/abcs-r-alan-smithson/ https://alan-smithson.medium.com/the-metaverse-manifesto-2206d893a3bb https://engine.metavrse.com/view?i=8399 https://alan-smithson.medium.com/a-brand-guide-to-the-metaverse-part-i-benefits-examples-a371bb74160 Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by grwth.co. Grwth offers fractional CMOs, paired with best-in-class digital marketing execution to support early-stage startup success. With a focus on seed and series A companies, Grwth has helped a number of SaaS, digital health, and e-commerce startups build their go-to-market function and scale up. To learn more and book a free consultation, go to grwth.co. Get in touch with Mosheh: www.linkedin.com/in/moshehp twitter.com/MoshehP hello@pmfpod.com www.pmfpod.com

On this episode of HYPERSCALE by Briar Prestidge we are joined by Alan Smithson Co-Founder of MetaVRse, a low-code platform that makes it easy to create & share interactive 3D experiences instantly on the web. Named as one of the most prominent Digital Futurists to watch in 2022, Alan is also Co Founder of TheMall.io and on a mission to build now for the positive future of humanity. He explains how by changing the way we educate future generations, we will in turn empower them to create solutions to meet the greatest challenges that humanity has ever faced. Alan explains how we are currently in the growth phase in technology and how AI can make our lives easier and simpler. Building for the positive future of humanity. We also discuss the future of retail and how Alan is building the world largest 3D virtual mall (Mall.io), access to AR/VR in higher education and how the GenZ generation can find solutions to climate change.  FOLLOW ► Instagram: https://bit.ly/briarig.     LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/briarlinkedin TikTok: https://bit.ly/briartiktok WEBSITE: https://briarprestidgeofficial.com

It's a new year, and after wrapping up another NRF Big Show, we felt it was time to share our Top 10 Predictions for retail and retail tech in 2023! What will retailers focus on this year? How will consumer shopping and buying habits change? From the evolution of retail media networks and loyalty programs, to web3, the metaverse, and ChatGPT, what technologies make the cut and deserve your attention? Hosts Ricardo and Casey cut through the clutter and give you their top 10 trends for 2023 in this episode. See if their predictions match yours and let us know on LinkedIn!Plus, our new segment, Retail Razor Data Blades returns, with another special data insight from Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating, learned from their 100,000's of point-of-sale customer survey polls. In this episode learn how aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role in consumer buying decisions!News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show was a finalist for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during the NRF Big Show 2023!News alert #2! We've moved up to #18 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list - please consider giving us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts! With your help, we'll move our way up the Top 20! Leave us a review & be mentioned in future episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023, 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2023. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, Overclocked, and Tech Lore, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS1E9 Top 10 Predictions for 2023[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:[00:00:20] Show Intro[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to season two, episode nine of The Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome retail show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.[00:00:38] Ricardo Belmar: Well, Casey, this is the moment many of our fans have been waiting for.[00:00:43] It's time for our top 10 retail predictions for 2023, and as a huge bonus, we are recording live and in person in New York City right after the end of the N R F big show. We're literally sitting face-to-face and we never get to do that for this show.[00:00:59] Casey Golden: never, I [00:01:00] mean, we're always sitting face to face from the shoulders up, [00:01:02] Ricardo Belmar: and a little square on a screen, but,[00:01:06] Casey Golden: I can't think of a better way to wrap up NRF than sharing our hot takes live.[00:01:10] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. We don't often get to do this live and in person.[00:01:13] Retail Razor Data Blades - "How aligning with consumer values still plays a critical role"[00:01:13] Ricardo Belmar: But first, it's time for the newest segment of our show Retail Razor Data Blades, where we talk real world numbers and slice through measurable consumer insights. It's a bit like, show me the math so I understand where this data's coming from and bringing us that slicing and dicing of data is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating.[00:01:30] TruRating is changing the way retailers track how customers feel against how they spend with an innovative multi-channel feedback solution with an average of 80% response rate from consumers. Georgina will share with us some key data points and offer a bit of insight into what's behind those numbers based on their extensive customer survey data at the point of sale.[00:01:48] Casey Golden: Welcome, Georgina.[00:01:50] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much for having me![00:01:52] Casey Golden: So today's Retail Razor Data Blade segment is "how aligning with customer values still plays [00:02:00] a critical role".[00:02:01] Georgina Nelson: So, yeah, to that point, we wanted to really find out what was driving consumers loyalty behavior. As you know, as a time when retailers are, are feeling the, the pinch of inflation as of their shoppers. You know, we can often get to this race to the bottom where prices are slashed in desperation to, to try and win that customer loyalty.[00:02:25] And so we, we asked some simple questions as to what was driving that loyal behavior. Interestingly, we found just over smidgen, over 50%, so 51% of consumers said they were influenced by their loyalty card and by money off vouchers. , but a staggering 77% said what actually drives their behavior and their loyalty is whether their retailers' values resonate with them and they affiliated with it.[00:02:56] And so I think in this modern time of loyalty, [00:03:00] you know, that sends a really clear message for retailers to understand what values do their customers really affiliate with and how can they market those to them and ensure that that's understood and really build that, build that bond with their consumer base.[00:03:17] Casey Golden: Yeah, really backs up the, you know, communicate your brand and your values. Stop talking about price.[00:03:24] Georgina Nelson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, even just recently, we've still seen that over 75% of US consumers. They do want to buy ecologically sound products. They do want to buy organic when those choices are available. And so it's really to retailers, you know, don't scrimp on these initiatives just because times might be toughed because consumers are still are looking for those.[00:03:50] And looking for that stance in values to make their choices.[00:03:54] Casey Golden: Yep.[00:03:55] Ricardo Belmar: Georgina, it seems like for this to really be [00:04:00] beneficial for the retailers that are going to, like your data, is suggesting that they need to lean into this and, and not stop investing. They'd have to really understand how to communicate that to their customers to, to make it really worthwhile and beneficial.[00:04:14] Georgina Nelson: Yeah, I, you know, I think strategies need to be, it's not like a blanket one, one email, one shot in the dark. We really need to have a nuanced understanding of the customer base and what drives that loyalty. And then that needs to be communicated across a website, across product placements, across brand messaging.[00:04:36] And I think what's important is that, you know, all customers are not alike. You know, there's gonna be a mix. And what we see is that mix is more, you know, is obviously very prevalent at a store level. In terms of each store is a snowflake with different customer segmentation and really beginning to understand that at a store level, how you know, and testing and asking [00:05:00] customers now how have your, you know, have they understood the green initiatives which you are pushing?[00:05:07] Do they understand the drive on organic produce in, you know, understanding that awareness and then being able to tailor. Better coms and better marketing is absolutely key. And and we recommend doing that at a granular store level.[00:05:23] Casey Golden: I couldn't agree more. Well, that does it for another edition of Retail Razor Blades.[00:05:28] Georgina Nelson: Does this mean I get to keep the segment intro music every time? I'm on the show.[00:05:34] Ricardo Belmar: I, I think we can arrange that[00:05:36] Georgina Nelson: Thank you so much both.[00:05:38] Casey Golden: Absolute pleasure.[00:05:39] So now let's get right to those predictions. Ricardo, what would you say there are any underlining themes that we'll see across our 10 predictions?[00:05:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think there are at least two big themes. One would be the impact of the economy, of course, [00:06:00] that's having on retailer investments and consumer shopping habits, and I think the second is frankly, gen Z.[00:06:05] We'll see how Gen Z's shopping and buying habits are gonna have a bigger impact this year than they have in past years.[00:06:11] Prediction #1 - Private Label take over[00:06:11] Casey Golden: Let's dive into number one. Private label is taking over our shelves. You all know that I love a good brand and I'm a label of label lover, but a lot of products have become brand neutral with the help of the homogenization of marketplaces, like Wayfair and Amazon marketing convenience over the brands that they carry. Many private label brands are actually in our cupboards without even knowing it.[00:06:41] Margin is king, especially during these uncertain economic environments. Retailers need the most control over the product assortment and the bottom line. Finding a lot of Gen Z doesn't have the brand loyalty in CPG that a lot of other generations do. [00:06:58] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, I think that's [00:07:00] probably a key one right there too. Especially after a year of inflation consumers want lower cost options, but everyone still wants high quality. Nobody wants to go down in price and then get something that's just too cheap and not good enough. But I think the big difference that you just pointed out, it's, gen Z doesn't seem to care about brand loyalty, especially not with, with CPGs, might be a slightly different story if we're talking apparel or home goods. But I think at the end of the day, unless you're buying on the high end luxury side of home goods, most people don't care what the brand name is on it. It's just whatever looks good and feels good to them. When it's apparel, it all depends on who we're talking about.[00:07:35] Department stores for sure, probably would love to have a third of their sales or more be their own private labels, but the fact is a lot of 'em haven't traditionally been good enough for most buyers, but Gen Z doesn't seem to care.[00:07:46] Casey Golden: No. I mean, gosh, Shein did like a billion dollars in sales [00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, exactly.[00:07:50] Exactly. So , so, so what does that say? So yeah, I think that that's a, that's definitely a, a good number one to kick off the list. [00:07:58] Prediction #2 - Retail Media Network evolution [00:07:58] Ricardo Belmar: So let me take us to number two, [00:08:00] which for me is, is a big one. And everybody knows I love talking about this topic, and that's retail media networks and how they're gonna evolve. [00:08:07] This year it's all gonna be about the, in-store media experience and how that gets combined with all the digital channels to really make a, a good end-to-end media experience that retailers can sell to brands. So, everyone likes to debate this a little bit because it seems like a trend and yes, we all know that Amazon has the majority of the share, but the fact is even if a retailer can get one percent, of this total media network share.[00:08:33] Those are big numbers and, and they're big numbers that come with big margins, so it really is helpful.[00:08:39] for a[00:08:40] retailer, and if, if we look at some relevant context to this, I mean, you've got a lot of things that are going on that make this special. I mean, one, there's all the first party data that retailers are getting from these media networks, and that's huge.[00:08:51] That lets them deliver really strong return on the a on advertising spend, right? Good ROAS for the brands. And one of the things we heard during nrf, that's a [00:09:00] big trend on this that I a hundred percent agree with. You know, you've got a decline in TV advertising in general. We've got cookies going away and, and we've got just in general, right, the digitization of the store.[00:09:10] All this stuff kind of combines to make it super attractive to actually put media bys and advertising at the point at which a customer makes a buying decision. So why would this not increase?[00:09:22] And there's even, I think more from that, I mean, you know, people also like to debate where is the, where are these dollars coming from?[00:09:28] You know, brands look at all these media networks and as a brand say, oh, do I have to spend now on 20 different retail networks in addition to all the other ads spend? I have? Well, well, maybe they do, but the truth is right, they're gonna shift the spend a little bit. So it, the, the answer is, you know, when you ask where do the dollars come from?[00:09:43] Well, pretty much everywhere else, it's not a retail media network. But I think probably the biggest threat is to Facebook or Meta and to Google because it's their ad dollar spend that's gonna go to these retail media networks, Amazon and everybody else.[00:09:54] Casey Golden: 100 Percent. They're already, brands have already and been shifting these [00:10:00] budgets and not by a hundred thousand dollars, but like numbers.[00:10:04] 875,000 for those month[00:10:06] Ricardo Belmar: it's big numbers. It's big numbers. And when you roll in, the more advanced networks, they're gonna have tie-ins to streaming tv. They're gonna have connections into, players like Netflix, Hulu, and everybody that are gonna tie into it.[00:10:18] And it's all comes down to audience data, right? And, and when you start applying this in-store, let's remember that 85 percent of all retail sales still happen in stores. So this isn't just an e-commerce play anymore. This is about doing what, you know, Doug Stephens and others used to talk about the store as, as theater, the store as media.[00:10:36] Well, this is the year that we're really gonna start to see that because of these retail media networks and, and I think the last thing I'll add to it is, The end goal isn't just, I think the media network. The end goal is for the retailer to introduce a collection of B2B services. They can sell to brands or, and even to other retailers.[00:10:54] So, sure, Walmart's the obvious first one to do it because of their size and scale. But that doesn't mean that, Best [00:11:00] Buy, couldn't do it or, or any other large enough retailer couldn't take exactly what they're doing in these services, bundle 'em up and sell 'em as a package. They're gonna have so much more first party customer data.[00:11:11] Every brand wants access to that.[00:11:13] Casey Golden: I agree. And everybody's spent a lot of money over the last decade on creating their audience and all of their customer data. So this is just another monetization strategy that they can go ahead and not put it all just into the individual products that they're selling.[00:11:29] Ricardo Belmar: That's right, that's right. And, and I'll just repeat again, one reason why I think this is such a, a major thing for the year, the margin is better than just selling products to consumers. So while it might not be, you know, it might only be a fraction of your total. Sales volume, it comes with a good margin.[00:11:45] So it just helps the financials for the retailer. [00:11:48] Prediction #3 - Returns management is a top IT investment[00:11:48] Ricardo Belmar: So speaking of things that help the financials for the retailer, let's go on to number three. And I think that's all about returns management becoming a top IT investment. [00:12:00] Particularly powered with AI-based solutions because every retailer has an issue with returns right now.[00:12:05] It's not just because of of growing e-commerce buy, it's because it's just the new habits that consumers have had to buy more than what they need in return, what they don't after they decide. But this has caused massive logistics challenges for retailers. Huge cost impact. And it's one thing to say we just need to get consumers to not return things.[00:12:25] But the fact is you can't just change those buying habits for, for consumers, you need to really look at it and say, well, what can I do to prevent the cause of the return in the first place? So, yes, we all know that this is hardest to do in apparel because we still have issues with fit. There's new fit tech coming around.[00:12:43] We've seen some players in that. More and more of that is gonna be made available until that gets solved it's gonna be a real challenge to, to improve this situation in apparel. But if we look at any other product category, I think the key is retailers investing in solutions that are going to help them understand why the [00:13:00] returns are happening and then make adjustments.[00:13:01] And it might even be in some cases, as simple as your product page description on your e-commerce isn't good enough. And people are buying it by, because without realizing it's not what they want in the first place,[00:13:11] Casey Golden: a hundred percent better images, I'm seeing more 3D images, I'm seeing more videos available on the products. And I think that was pretty much the, one of the main topics that I heard from over the last week has all been about returns.[00:13:26] We need to control our returns, we need to reduce our returns. And I think, you know, we still have to remember, too, every single time that package hits the doorstep and we pick it up, we get a dopamine hit, We really don't need what's in the box. We just wanted that dopamine hit. So there's, you know, there's that, too, [00:13:45] Ricardo Belmar: too there's, that too. [00:13:45] Casey Golden: some consumer buying behavior here that has caused some, a little bit of package addiction.[00:13:50] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And that has a, a huge sustainability impact. So as we see retailers lean in more into sustainability issues and control than ha controlling that [00:14:00] returns problem is a big, big part of their sustainability process.[00:14:04] So, so that's definitely, I think gonna be a huge, again, huge area of investment is this.[00:14:08] Casey Golden: Yeah. If you're a brand or a retailer and you have a a 35% online return rate, you're not alone[00:14:15] that's right, [00:14:15] Ricardo Belmar: that's right, that's right. And, and that's, you know, at the risk of the new pun intended, but it's just not sustainable to keep having those high return rates.[00:14:23] Casey Golden: Not unless you got a 60% conversion rate.[00:14:26] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly. [00:14:27] Prediction #4 - Store Automation for Frontline Workers [00:14:27] Ricardo Belmar: So I'm gonna move on to number four. Continuing this little mini theme on where the investment dollars are going and technology, let's talk about store automation and how that's going to help frontline workers and store operations. Why?[00:14:40] Because the, that labor shortage retailers have had this past year. It's not going away. It's not going away this year. There's still an issue of you don't have the staff that you want, which means you need that store team to be more efficient in what they're doing, more productive, but you also need to retain them.[00:14:55] And retaining them means you need to make the environment better and and more [00:15:00] interesting, more enjoyable for them. So what are you gonna invest? When you're gonna invest in technology? Is it help get rid of all those mundane tasks that everybody doesn't want to do because they're not complicated, they're just kind of routine and they're tedious.[00:15:12] Find ways to automate and get rid of all, all[00:15:14] Casey Golden: mine. We all wanna walk the aisles and do a price change.[00:15:18] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Which, so, so things like electronic shelf labels comes into play here? I mean, that's not even a new technology, right? It's been around for a while, but because of the cost, no one's had a motivation to put it in.[00:15:29] Now we're starting to see a lot more interest in that because it takes that job away from the store team so they don't have to deal with it and they can do more work in front of a customer. Workforce management, right? More investment in shift management. Let your employees manage their schedules.[00:15:42] That's what every store team employee wants is flexibility in their schedule. Just give it to them. Put the tools in place, let all your store teams work with a mobile device, have the right tools on it. And then there's new things. We, we've talked on this show before about store associates leading your live streaming efforts from the store, especially in [00:16:00] smaller retailers.[00:16:00] There are plenty of associates who are good at this and who probably already have their own livestream effort on YouTube or something on their own time. So why not take advantage of those skills, put those skills to work, which by the way, is gonna make that job more interesting.[00:16:14] Exactly. For those story searches. Yeah.[00:16:15] Casey Golden: it, it makes it a longer job retention because what used to be like, well, I'm gonna do this for a year. It turns into potentially five years and moving actually into your marketing department, [00:16:27] Ricardo Belmar: right? Which gives you a career path. And the whole goal is to make those jobs, not just jobs, but to turn it into a career path so that this is an area and a field that people want to work in now.[00:16:38] And that's is gonna start with this, this new level of investment in these technologies this year.[00:16:42] Casey Golden: I agree. I sure know. I expect people to know about the product when we walk up to them. Can't do that if they, they don't [00:16:50] Ricardo Belmar: it. Absolutely. And they gotta have access to the data and the information or, or they, they're, you can't expect them to know everything as the retailers, so you gotta put the information[00:16:58] Casey Golden: Yeah, it's gotta be fine.[00:16:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:17:00] Accessible. Exactly. [00:17:02] Prediction #5 - BNPL explodes even more[00:17:02] Casey Golden: B N P L. [00:17:04] Ricardo Belmar: Number five [00:17:05] Casey Golden: Explodes or implodes. We'll see. But this holiday, B N P L got a big boost mostly from Gen Z. Regulators have started to look into this in 2022, but the debt this is causing could potentially, catch up in 2023. But we're seeing that they are expanding their businesses beyond their core, buy now, pay later product by launching new revenue channels, implementing new solutions, or even making new acquisitions.[00:17:41] To become more than just a BNPL, but to be a marketplace, to be managing customer acquisition and getting more brands and products through as a connection point, I think we'll definitely also see more sustainability and wellness for financial literacy and, and [00:18:00] financial wellness tools to increase that engagement and, you know, potentially mitigating some of the regulatory concerns.[00:18:07] But I think we'll, we'll definitely see something here mature as a product and a, and a space in general and could be a better opportunity for more brands to actually be exposed to some new customers and customer acquisition much like a, a marketplace.[00:18:27] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that, I think that one makes sense. And there's definitely, you know, again, that Gen Z connection o over the holidays for this one. I, I think you're right. We, we kind of predicted that last year.[00:18:36] It didn't totally happen the way we thought it would or as quickly as we thought. So I think it's, it's fair we're kind of shifting in a little bit to this year because it, it's just inevitable at this point. I, I think the more this grows, the more attention it's gonna get, the more of the financial stability issues matter for consumers. So it's gonna get looked at. And I think to their credit, right, the BM p l providers that they know this is coming and that's why they're all [00:19:00] kind of protecting themselves at expanding beyond that core. Like you said, Casey turning into marketplaces,[00:19:05] Casey Golden: they've changed their narratives. [00:19:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah.[00:19:06] I mean I think at the end of the day you can kind of say buy now, pay later in of itself probably wasn't an entire business, it was a[00:19:13] Casey Golden: It was[00:19:13] feature. so Right. [00:19:14] Ricardo Belmar: gotta be part of something else and, and that's what drove a lot of those acquisitions.[00:19:18] Casey Golden: it was a feature, not necessarily the, the[00:19:20] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly.[00:19:21] Casey Golden: And just coming outta holiday, we've got a, and then going into what many would associate as like a recession or an economic downturn. There's a lot of debt sitting out there. There's multiple players.[00:19:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:19:35] Casey Golden: So [00:19:36] Ricardo Belmar: definitely, definitely.[00:19:37] Prediction #6 - CDP explosion[00:19:37] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey, bring us to number six. [00:19:40] Casey Golden: Well, it's 2023 and everyone's a C D P. A term that, there was a few of us that knew what A C D P was, you know, three years ago.[00:19:49] Now its seems to be everybody is a C D P. . And at the same time, nobody knows what a CDP is.[00:19:54] Ricardo Belmar: is. . That's right. . It's so true. That's so true.[00:19:57] That's so true.[00:19:58] Casey Golden: So everyone [00:20:00] is, you know, essentially brands are continuing to build their own from scratch. While the marketplace landscape creates more sophisticated products these consumer data platforms create a persistent, a more unified consumer database and make this data accessible to other systems.[00:20:16] Really pulling in from all of these multiple sources, being able to have this, single customer profile and really be able to manage consumer data to support compliance and governmental regulation requirements. This is definitely becoming a bigger and bigger concern over privacy and security, consumer data loss and, and protection in general.[00:20:37] It's definitely a high priority for all retailers and brands right now, and even SaaS companies that are processing consumer data. But I think here is where we'll also see a big uptake in more productized solutions coming in with different AI and ML use cases that can be powered [00:21:00] because of the efforts going into scrub all of this data and create these, single API to be able to access it.[00:21:10] And I think it's gonna be able to drive a lot of personalization going forward.[00:21:16] So I am very excited about this trend.[00:21:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I agree. I agree. And I think you're, you're absolutely right that that , while everybody's either wants to be a CDP or claims to be a cdp, there's still a lot of confusion over exactly what is a customer data platform.[00:21:30] When you talk to retailers and understanding what, what can you do with it? What am I gonna use it for, and what's the right solution out there for it? And there are different, different products or different needs, just like in any other category, but this is definitely one that when you look at, like you're saying, anything related to all requirements around privacy and data security.[00:21:48] There are new regulations, variations by state, by country you know, it's just becoming really hard to manage all of this. So if you don't have the right platform underneath it all, then how are you really ever gonna comply [00:22:00]with everything? Not to mention, before you even get to how you're using all this data and your own marketing efforts to consumers[00:22:05] Casey Golden: Exactly. Just getting it in one place is one thing. Exactly. And being able to make an edit or a change or validate.[00:22:11] These are not simple builds.[00:22:14] Ricardo Belmar: right? Yeah, yeah. These[00:22:15] Casey Golden: heavy [00:22:16] Ricardo Belmar: builds. That's right. [00:22:17] Casey Golden: And this, this is gonna be involv. 40 different other software companies that are plugging [00:22:22] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. That's why [00:22:24] Casey Golden: may or may not be new.[00:22:25] Yeah. [00:22:25] Ricardo Belmar: So making the right choice is, is super important. And just making sure you have a good c d p is absolutely critical. Now it's, I think this, what we're saying, I guess we're saying this is the year that it becomes table stakes as you just have to have [00:22:37] Casey Golden: this[00:22:38] yes. This is not, also not a fail fast product.[00:22:41] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. [00:22:44] Prediction #7 - Loyalty program evolution [00:22:44] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey, give us number seven,[00:22:46] Casey Golden: Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty programs are definitely going to be evolving beyond a point system or a punch card. I've never seen loyalty take such [00:23:00] a center stage as I have in the, the last probably four months of conversations and going into 2023. Retention, retention, retention, retention.[00:23:10] And I think that all kind of goes back to the CPM cost the lack of performance from Facebook ads, the marketing costs lower conversion rates, and really being able to engage your customer. , we're seeing more paid tiers as a new revenue source for a lot of brands to pay more for better service or, or additional perks.[00:23:31] And there's the web three evolution for the NextGen loyalty programs. And I think this is very interesting because there are so many. How do you communicate and how do you manage these VIPs online and in-store across different locations? via email[00:23:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's gonna work [00:23:52] Casey Golden: well.[00:23:52] Right? You know, I mean[00:23:53] Ricardo Belmar: E emails that they're likely to ignore. [00:23:54] Casey Golden: Right? Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we really go back to a email communication with our customer, [00:24:00] which is always one-sided. And so managing loyalty programs, potentially just by email not the best utility. And I see a lot of opportunity here with the blockchain and leveraging these different web three types of loyalty programs to manage this much better.[00:24:21] And with Unlockables, I think that there's a lot of room here to grow and I think it's one part of Web three that makes sense for retail because we don't have 10 VIPs. , we have 1.5 million globally.[00:24:38] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. I think this is one of our more interesting predictions, as well, but kind of putting it in context, what do you think then of what Starbucks is doing?[00:24:48] Casey Golden: I love Starbucks. I've never used a loyalty at Starbucks. I pay full price since I should have bought stock when I was like 10. I should own a[00:24:56] Ricardo Belmar: right? . [00:24:56] Casey Golden: So I mean, I think that what they've done is great. I'm a big fan [00:25:00] of the vendor that they're using. Of course, I think we all are right. But I, I love the fact that they just moved on web three and went on with the loyalty program and really focusing on the retention piece because when you are a regular, you are a regular, not for a year, but like 20,[00:25:16] Ricardo Belmar: right?[00:25:17] That's right. [00:25:18] Casey Golden: You know? [00:25:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. We're talking real loyalty. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And, and we know from, not even considering that the web three. evolution of this, which I think is going to have huge impact. But when you look at the most successful loyalty programs, right, I, I will call Starbucks existing one, one of those.[00:25:34] I mean, Ulta Beauty's loyalty program is massively successful. Like huge, almost all of their customers are in that loyalty program. So it'll be interesting to see how they evolve it. But this is, I, I think this is a big one, and, and. . I, I would stress too, you, you mentioned that, the idea of having paid tiers and full membership programs as part of these loyalties, so loyalty is finally becoming more than just a discount.[00:25:55] And, and I think now it's, yeah,[00:25:56] Casey Golden: And this is a way to actually make it a club tier [00:26:00] and manage it, because otherwise you're managing it literally in email segments,[00:26:04] Ricardo Belmar: emails that just get ignored.[00:26:05] Casey Golden: You just, they just get ignored. And it's just, it's not scalable solution. And I think that this could be, Really, really compelling to be able to scale one your own loyalty program, but to be able to collaborate with other people's loyalty programs.[00:26:20] So what if Starbucks loyalty program communicated to Ulta's loyalty program? And this is where Web three can play [00:26:29] Ricardo Belmar: very [00:26:29] Casey Golden: interesting, is it [00:26:30] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:26:31] Casey Golden: the collaboration's a [00:26:33] Ricardo Belmar: these an, an even more useful and, and valuable club like relationship[00:26:38] Casey Golden: Yeah. I'm not exporting my, my email list and giving it to you. It's against yeah, it's against compliance.[00:26:43] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. customer data. Yep. [00:26:47] Prediction #8 - Anywhere Commerce vs Immersive Commerce[00:26:47] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Let's go to number eight, and this one I'm kind of referring to as anywhere commerce versus immersive commerce. Why? Because we all know that consumers want to transact commerce pretty much anywhere and everywhere [00:27:00] they are.[00:27:00] And yes, we, everybody says that all the time. We all know you can sort of, kind of do this with, with mobile. The fact is it's still not quite good enough and not always quick enough to meet your in the moment needs, with just a, a phone or, or mobile device. , so what's new in this prediction is that the context of where you are and how that changes how you would conduct that transaction? It's not necessarily the same process that you want as a consumer if you're in your car or on the subway or walking down the street versus sitting on your couch or sitting at a desk. I mean, each of these has different requirements in how you shop and how you buy.[00:27:37] And we've kind of generalized them to date, right? And maybe two or three different form factors. And, that's what we're saying. So, so to me, this idea of anywhere commerce is completely new kinds of solutions coming out. Some of them were at ces, some of them have been just started come out in, in the last year.[00:27:52] We'll hopefully be talking to some of those in future episodes this year. But it, it's all about adapting the medium to [00:28:00] work in a matter that still reduces that friction, eliminates complexity and makes it easy to transact commerce for the consumer in that contextual moment. And, and that's not quite the same as just saying mobile solves everything.[00:28:11] So that's the anywhere commerce side[00:28:12] Casey Golden: I mean, we've really, I mean, how many years have we tried to get live inventory feeds for physical stores to go with mapping, right? I mean, and I, I keep saying this over and over and over again, like when I am, you know, speaking with, with people over the, the evolution of commerce, our physical software is just not digitally native.[00:28:35] And so being able to work in real time it's, it's doable. And I think we're, we're finally gonna get to that point where you're gonna know the inventory one block ahead of you.[00:28:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And, and how it's presented to you matters. So you might need to know that inventory, but depending on what you're doing, it doesn't do you any good to be shown an image of it. Right. Or to be shown, how to find it. You just need to be told [00:29:00] that it's there. Yeah. And that's all you need to know in that moment to, to make a decision. So that kind of adaptability, it makes a difference and it has an impact on conversion.[00:29:08] So that, I think there's that. So now let's talk about the immersive commerce part of this. So that's the anywhere commerce piece. I like immersive commerce as a new term. And, and I'm gonna just kind of say this sort of for me replaces the broad. Metaverse discussion because I, I kind, if I break out the AR and the VR pieces for metaverse applications and, and look at, you know, how do you actually expect consumers to engage in commerce?[00:29:31] I, I still don't think every metaverse example we have now implies that everybody's gonna sit around with a lot of gear on their head and on their hands. And who wants to do that for hours at a time? [00:29:40] Casey Golden: wants, who wants to be responsible for that for society? [00:29:44] Ricardo Belmar: there's that too. So, I don't see that yet happening for just general commerce.[00:29:49] I mean, I can see it for, you know, if, if you're, if companies are hiring new employees and they want to do some new employee training and onboarding in a metaverse version of their [00:30:00] headquarters, I think that's a totally applicable use case. That makes a lot of sense when you've got so many people working remotely.[00:30:06] But that doesn't mean they're doing it for eight hours a day. It means they might do it for half an hour and then take a break and then come back in another half an hour or, or, or whatever it is. But it's not all day long and I haven't seen enough examples. Yeah, I mean, the whole point to doing this is not just to replicate a store, but to do things that you can't do in a physical space.[00:30:25] So we, we had Alan Smithson on here before talking about the mall in the Metaverse, and they're doing it a little differently, which I think is the right answer to enable you to do things that you couldn't do in the physical space, not just replicate it. But again, let's take the, the technology pieces out of it and let's look at, for example, AR. You can create as a retailer a really immersive experience with AR that lets someone understand the product.[00:30:46] Feel like they're engaging it, seeing it, feeling it, touching it without actually having it there. You know, this year's NRF had a lot of hologram demos of showing people what outfits might look like. Look, very three-dimensional. That's pretty immersive. I think the one thing [00:31:00] coming out of a pandemic, everybody wants to go back to this experiential retail, and that's where the immersive commerce comes in.[00:31:06] But you don't have to do it in the metaverse. So if you're a retailer, you know, where am I gonna invest money? And time and resources to do something that I expect to have a short term impact this year on consumers buy more from me. I think it's chasing those immersive experiences than chasing a brand new thing that the marketing team wants to do in the metaverse.[00:31:25] Casey Golden: I agree. And I think it's, it's also too we went with like the metaverse and it's something else and you need to go to it, to I don't know, what was it, say like, decentral land had like 31 user, daily active[00:31:36] Ricardo Belmar: something like that.[00:31:36] Casey Golden: Where it's just like, okay, maybe the user adoption, it's too far of a bridge.[00:31:42] So now everything's kind of coming back into a web two scope. To make it feel more immersive, but it's not necessarily using these technologies that are, are metaverse the way we defined it. I don't know. Or end of 2021 [00:32:00] all of last year. Right, right. You know, that too big a bridge. So now it's kind of changing.[00:32:05] So I think it's more about more about what than where.[00:32:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right.[00:32:09] Prediction #9 - web3 vs metaverse[00:32:09] Casey Golden: but it's, I mean, that can lead us into the, the web three versus Metaverse[00:32:14] Ricardo Belmar: which is our number nine,[00:32:15] Casey Golden: which is number nine. Web three is carving out its space in commerce. While the Metaverse is a marketer's new shiny object you know, where we have this underlining technology.[00:32:27] Can provide a more scalable utility and a more secure utility for a lot of different commerce applications. But it's not necessarily the metaverse. And I think that there's been some confusion over last year, everybody kind of figuring out what's an N F T, what's a digital twin, What is phygital, right?[00:32:46] Like all of these different opportunities. Where, and then we have the crypto crash So then it's just like, oh, maybe the hype's over. Web three is a definitely, I feel here to stay. Digital twinning has become [00:33:00] much more operational after all of these players experimenting in it last year, and we'll see more mature products and use cases from streaming the operational and production changes for business processes for physical apparel, phygital apparel and really being able to leverage almost another type of infrastructure as we go into more scalable and digital, digital native software solutions. And the metaverse, I see being more of like that new immersive marketing medium where instead of it being a flat Instagram image or a reel or a video this is an opportunity to move from broadcasting to interactive brand experiences becoming the destination.[00:33:48] But actually being able to have that fantasy that a lot of brands just can't afford to do in real life, you know? [00:33:57] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I think at the end of the day, [00:34:00] Meta and our friend Zuckerberg out there really burst the bubble on, on the excitement to this I think. Everybody thinks that they're just failing by throwing good money after bad. And, and that's soured a lot of people on it.[00:34:10] But I agree. Digital twins is probably the, to me, the top use case that comes out of the metaverse. It's got real utility. There are lots of brands using that, especially on, on the CPG side to do a lot of new product development model their, their factories and production lines so that they don't have to.[00:34:25] Figure out and spend money in the physical world and to make changes. They'll know before they make the first change, whether it's gonna work or not, and how much it's gonna save by doing the digital twins. So there's real value there. And I think you're, you're right, the web three part of it, you touched on it before on the loyalty program, so that's got real, real world value in that.[00:34:41] So we'll see more of it. Yeah, so I think that's definitely web three versus the metaverse. I think Web three is gonna be the winner there this year. [00:34:48] Prediction #10 - Generative AI[00:34:48] Ricardo Belmar: So let's move into the last one, number 10, which we would be remiss if we didn't have a predictions episode without talking about all these generative AI solutions that have come up in recent weeks, [00:35:00]whether it's ChatGPT and Dalle-2, all these things.[00:35:03] And what does that mean . To me this is, these are cool technologies, these are amazing applications of AI that retailers, just like every other business, are gonna figure out where and how are they gonna make use of it. I mean, you could see , something like ChatGPT being used to help write their marketing material.[00:35:19] For example,[00:35:20] Casey Golden: like, why did we not just ask the question and. In chat, G P T before the podcast,[00:35:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we should, I'm afraid of what it would've[00:35:27] told us. , I'm afraid what it would've told us, wonder if would've, we would've matched up to any other ones. It tells us are the, the top 10 [00:35:35] Casey Golden: All [00:35:35] Ricardo Belmar: like to know. Okay, so, so yeah.[00:35:37] Homework for all our listeners is go ask ChatGPT for the top 10. And my big question, would it list itself as one of the big predictions and big trends for the year?[00:35:47] Casey Golden: Right?[00:35:47] Ricardo Belmar: right. But if you think. There are tools coming out already to integrate these technologies into other applications, other areas?[00:35:55] I mean, I'm, I'm just thinking of you know, this, this could have an impact in changing how people search for [00:36:00] products. For example, if I'm a retailer and I incorporate this into my app, maybe there's new reasons now as a consumer for me to go into the app and not spend time going to Amazon or Google to search for products.[00:36:09] I can just do it in their app and I can do it in a conversational way by just talking to the app. I. I don't know. I personally don't think there are a lot of people asking Alexa or Siri to help them shop[00:36:20] Casey Golden: No, I mean, you know, it it, it comes back to garbage in, garbage out.[00:36:25] And so in shopping, we've had a lot of garbage in.[00:36:27] Yeah, right. I just wanna see pencil skirts that have a double, double kick plate.[00:36:31] I've never seen the word double kick plate on any e-commerce listing in my life. And I have to go store by store. Yeah. But there's opportunity here,[00:36:41] Ricardo Belmar: right? And, and. Connect the dots on this to our retail media networks and B2B services prediction.[00:36:48] I mean, you apply these things to all the media that you're putting into the network and how the retailer interfaces that with the brands there. There's impact on both sides of this, right? For the brands and using these technologies to generate the media they're [00:37:00] placing into the network on the retailer and how they're presenting it in store on digital screens.[00:37:05] There's amazing applications and potential here. I, it's this one. I think at the same time, it's easy to predict. It's also hard to predict because knowing exactly what we're gonna see retailers create with this, I, I don't think anybody can legitimately do that right now in January. But I think, you know, it would be foolish not to have this on any predictions list for the year that it's gonna have a major impact.[00:37:26] Casey Golden: No, I mean, it's really interesting.[00:37:27] I've spoken to a lot of people in this, more on the tech side of the space. Everybody knows what it is, but when I've spoken to some brands and designers and and whatnot, they've never heard of it.[00:37:44] Right.[00:37:44] It's too soon. [00:37:45] there is definitely going, like, there, should[00:37:50] we move so fast for, for these, these retailers and brands on the tech side that, you know, they can't keep track of all of these things.[00:37:57] Thankfully there's, you know, a lot of retail consultants and a [00:38:00] lot of technologists that are really diving into here and finding the value . To bring back some type of a solution for Branson retailers with a use [00:38:08] Ricardo Belmar: case.[00:38:08] Yeah. And, and I think this is a lot like what's we've been saying and the other predictions is happening with web three, right? Where we, where we're finally seeing major examples in loyalty. It's where the actual retail tech that's being used in some ways hides all of the complexities and, and things that you have to know to implement on the tech side for this or the retail.[00:38:27] The brand doesn't need to deal with it, the solution just doesn't. And I think the same thing will happen here once we start to see the tools. Right now everybody's playing around with the raw capability that ChatGPT gives 'em or Dalle two. But when that gets integrated with the right tools and APIs so that you can put it in other things, we'll see new retail tech solutions come up that are going to use this, but they're gonna deliver a business outcome for the retailer of the brand without having to know that this is what's going on in the [00:38:54] Casey Golden: Exactly.[00:38:54] They're probably not even gonna know.[00:38:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And And that's what's gonna help at scale[00:38:57] Casey Golden: what's coming in. Right. And I've seen a [00:39:00] lot more success on these solutions. when you have the context of the end use case. Right. And I'm, I think we're just gonna see in general a huge push of people from retail that are in tech are going to be making some really big moves in the industry.[00:39:20] I think the most need for a retail technology consultant in general. It's not about omnichannel, it's not about bricks, it's not about clicks. It's literally about getting a technologist to work with you that understands the retail[00:39:36] business. [00:39:36] Ricardo Belmar: There's, there's a big opportunity there for the consultants in the industry and for all the, the services companies that are gonna help with implementations[00:39:43] Casey Golden: because it's a lot of, it's a lot of whiplash,[00:39:46] Ricardo Belmar: It is. Yeah. . That's right, [00:39:50] Casey Golden: that's plus running your own business, you[00:39:52] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly. Yeah.[00:39:53] Casey Golden: has a job already, right? So[00:39:55] Ricardo Belmar: Kind of implied, not so much because it's not really worth as a prediction, but kind of implied across all of [00:40:00] these that every retailer is actually focusing on the core business while dealing with all these things.[00:40:04] So yeah, that's sort of a given to that. All right, well, those are the 10, those are our 10 predictions. So for all of our listeners and show fans, hit us up on LinkedIn. Give us your comments and feedback. Let us know what you think. And we'll be checking in throughout the year to see how we're doing on these, like we did last season and see what happens from there.[00:40:25] Casey Golden: I, I've never been more excited for a year to work in my life. like 2023 Yeah. Is going to be the most fun.[00:40:34] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. There's so much potential here. Absolutely. Absolutely. . Well, Casey, I think that is a wrap for this episode.[00:40:42] Casey Golden: Love it.[00:40:43] Show Close[00:40:43] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you [00:41:00] more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:41:14] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:41:31] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:41:32] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail, if you cut through the clutter! Until next time, this is the Retail Razor Show. 

Direct-to-consumer. DTC. What emotional response do those words conjure for you? The formula for DTC used to be simple – spend marketing dollars to acquire new customers. Today, customer acquisition costs can be 10X higher than they used to be, so what should be the new strategy in these challenging, post-pandemic economic times? Polly Wong, president of Bellardi Wong, and our latest Retail Transformer, has the answers. Polly's agency works with the best, most successful DTC brands and she is sharing the best practices every DTC founder, brand manager, and category manager need to know to be successful in this episode! Should you open stores? Leverage print? Catalogs? Is Facebook still worthwhile? What about TikTok? Listen and find out!News alert #1: The Retail Razor Show has been nominated for The Retail Voice Award at the Vendors in Partnership Award ceremony during NRF 2023 in January in New York City! IF you're a fan of the show, please give us your vote! You can vote here: https://bit.ly/VIPretail News alert #2! We've moved up to #19 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we'll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review to be mentioned in upcoming episodes! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS2E5 Retail Transformers - Polly Wong[00:00:00] Pre-Intro[00:00:00] Casey Golden: Ricardo, I've got one word for you to describe this week's show. Dtc. [00:00:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, so Casey, I'm thinking that's technically three words, but, but nevermind that. Um, I don't think we've done an entire show focused on DTC before, have we?[00:00:13] Casey Golden: Hey, I didn't write the script. So[00:00:21] So this is exciting and. I'm especially pumped for all [00:00:24] the DTC founders out there tuning in. This one is for you.[00:00:28] Ricardo Belmar: That's true, and honestly, if you're a direct to consumer founder listening or, or watching us on YouTube, stop right now. Go grab a pen and paper or your iPad or whatever you like to use to take notes, because believe me, you are going to be writing things down nonstop in a mad fury throughout this episode.[00:00:45] Casey Golden: Oh yeah. The tips and tricks are going to be flying. And you just don't wanna miss a[00:00:50] minute.[00:00:51] Ricardo Belmar: So should we just start the show or should we make listeners suffer a little bit more first, with more of our carefree and eloquent banter,[00:00:56] Casey Golden: Oh, you're so cruel. Let's get to the music already. [00:00:59][00:01:19] Show Intro[00:01:19] Ricardo Belmar: Hello and welcome to season two, episode five of The Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:01:25] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome to the Retail Razor Show listeners, retail's unapologetically authentic podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and tech alike. [00:01:39] Ricardo Belmar: We are [00:01:40] back with another [00:01:41] episode in our Retail Transformers series, and honestly, if you thought last episode's guest, Alan Smithson was an absolutely incredible, never ending source of value on the Metaverse, wow are you gonna be blown away with today's guest and topic![00:01:54] Casey Golden: Yeah. As a founder, I'm so excited we're going to dive into this world of D to C and talk with amazing expert that's working with most of the top D to C brands out there. You would not believe how much knowledge she has to share, and that could really impact your DTC business by multiples [00:02:16] Ricardo Belmar: Indeed! Faithful followers, you will learn exactly why Polly Wong is more than meets the eye. This may go down as one of our most listened to episodes. We're gonna hear about what the right marketing and media spend mix should be for customer acquisition today. Because honestly, if you think it's the same as it was in the early days of D to C, boy are you in for a shock.[00:02:35] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, did you even consider print, like say catalogs? I bet you didn't. You will after this episode.[00:02:44] Ricardo Belmar: And then there's all the tips you're gonna hear [00:02:46] on growth strategies, how to activate your CRM for more profitable growth, retargeting those customers. And what about opening stores? Have you thought about where to open stores? [00:02:55] Casey Golden: There's just so much we could list. I mean, you're going to hear so many incredible [00:03:00] nuggets on marketing, roi, ROAS, and just so much more. [00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: All right, then let's get to it. [00:03:06] Casey Golden: Let's roll.[00:03:07][00:03:12] Polly Wong Interview[00:03:12] Ricardo Belmar: And we're here with our special guest and latest retail transformer to visit the show. Polly Wong, President of Belardi Wong, which some people may know as a direct to consumer marketing agency. But more on that in a moment. First of all, welcome Polly.[00:03:26] Polly Wong: Thank you for having me.[00:03:27] Casey Golden: It's great to have you on the show. Since we first met you, we've both been looking forward to this conversation and really digging in. So excited [00:03:36] Ricardo Belmar: Polly just to get us started, why don't you give us a more complete introduction of yourself and tell us about your company and what you do.[00:03:42] Polly Wong: You know, I've been in retail for 25 years. I've had an incredible amount of experience. Really. It's both on the client side at some major retailers. I started 25 years ago at eddiebower.com. I was fortunate to work at Williams Sonoma Inc across their portfolio of brands before jumping to the dark side to the agency side, which is a lot of fun and an incredible learning curve.[00:04:06] It's like learning on steroids, I like to say. Today at Belardi Wong, we have 400 active clients, about 90% D TO C brands. Of course, D to C brands have stores as well. And then some very large retail brands that that all of you would know as well. A tremendous amount of experience in fashion, at home decor, furnishings also in some niche categories as well.[00:04:28] We definitely do tend to work with premium brands targeting an affluent consumer. So much of the vantage point that I have to share with you today is really from that angle of brands who are really targeting, you know, an affluent consumer. The folks out there buying, you know, two or $300 sweaters and expensive shoes and $5,000 sofa.[00:04:47] So I, I like to make that clearer, but we're really privileged just to have an incredible vantage point into the industry. [00:04:53] Casey Golden: Really excited to dig deeper in this. As I mentioned before, I'm very intrigued in, in, into the side of the business of marketing. Compared to a lot of the more traditional route that have been taken over the last decade. So clearly you're focused on direct to consumer brands, both old and new, but certainly more established brands.[00:05:10] I think based off of what you said, one of the areas getting a lot of press lately in the D to C space is really how the marketing spend is being shifted from Facebook, Google, versus other mediums. Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening here with D to C brands and how that's changing this marketing mix?[00:05:30] Polly Wong: Sure. So it's been a really fascinating year to watch how the Apple platform changes have really impacted all of the digital platforms. Specifically meta we've found, as an aside, we've found that really Google is quite a resilient, steady, reliable channel. You know, Google continues to make enhancements that work for advertisers.[00:05:52] Performance Max on Google has worked very well for our clients over the last several months, so, so Google's very kind of reliable and steady. Google has had 10 to 50% increase, 10 to 15% increases. And, you know, costs, but really in line with kind of all the cost increases we're seeing across the p and l as a brand or as a retailer.[00:06:12] So really the challenge on the digital side in the last year has really come from meta and the Apple platform changes basically led. To less effective targeting and less effective measurement. And at the same time that our clients have seen a less effective measurement and less effective targeting on meta, they've also seen some pretty steep double digit increases on CPMs, on meta or Facebook, if you will.[00:06:38] And so we've seen dramatic underperformance in the last year, specifically in the social landscape. And so, you know, D to C brands inherently were built on Facebook and Google. The inherent DNA, if you will, of, of D to C brands is that one, they're performance based marketers, and two, you know, they're just wholeheartedly focused on new customer acquisition.[00:07:01] And so now you've seen that this Facebook channel just, you know, one of the top two most critical channels for new customer acquisition for DTC brands has really begun to plummet in the last year. I know across our client base through August, our clients have spent 19% less this year versus last year on Meta.[00:07:21] And that's because of the significant underperformance. But obviously Meta has taken the lion share of most of the marketing dollars for D2C brands. So, the question is, where is it going? You know, where are they shifting marketing spend? And that's been really interesting to [00:07:35] Casey Golden: That's great, and you really mention it as like a CRM strategy. [00:07:39] Is that, Is that right? [00:07:40] Spending shifts and pivots[00:07:40] Polly Wong: Yeah, so I think, well, I think we can talk about kind of where they're shifting their spend, but also, you know, what are some of the, the pivots that D to C brands need to make in order to be successful. And I think most D2C brands have not realized yet that the most incredible asset that they have is the customer file, the customer database.[00:08:01] That they've built up over the last five to 10 years. Now they've spent millions and millions of dollars building their customer file. New customer acquisition always comes at a cost. It's an investment. You cannot have a profitable business when you are only focused on acquisition as a fact.[00:08:15] Casey Golden: Oh my God, can you just like, say that [00:08:17] Ricardo Belmar: we should just frame that just to make that clear for, for everyone who's doubting that [00:08:22] Casey Golden: We're putting that in bold print.[00:08:24] Polly Wong: Yes. Also I'll just go out on a limb and also say you can't have a large, scalable, sustainable business when you only have a handful of product as well, we can get to that later. But definitely you can't just single handidly focus on new customer acquisition so I actually see, you know, there's a lot of headwinds right now, but I see a major tailwind that D to C brands could lean into is really crm, right? You know, I've talked to many, many brands over the years that when you ask them, they say they spent a hundred percent of their marketing budget on acquisition, and it's almost like crm, customer retention management. It's just an afterthought, right?[00:08:59] Like, Oh, we have email now, of course they'll say, We have email and sms. But there are really five major channels in the CRM toolbox, and we don't see D to C brands leaning into that. It's a discipline and a skill set they need to evolve to very quickly because that's where the profit is going to come, as we kind of stare down some economic uncertainty.[00:09:18] So the five channels that we really think about, obviously e email. Second is sms. Some clients have leaned into it very quickly. Some have not. It's still a huge opportunity. I, for one, wondered at the beginning if really SMS would just be shifting sales from email, but we do find that SMS is an incremental revenue driver.[00:09:37] So you've got email and sms. Obviously D to C brands are pretty good at targeting their customer file on Facebook, but they let it work too often on its own. And you really have to think about the segmentation and targeting of lapse customers. You have to carve out specific marketing dollars at targeting customers who've not bought from you in over a year.[00:09:58] There's still a better focus for your marketing dollar than pure new customer acquisition. And so you really wanna target your lapse customer file, on Facebook, and you wanna make sure you're looking at the frequency and the messaging and the targeting and the testing against that segment. [00:10:13] So now hopefully you've got brands, you know, leveraging and leaning into reactivation on social. I think what we don't find enough is actually proactive spending on search with your lapse customers. Let's say that Mary Jane bought a sweater from you a year and a half ago, and now Mary Jane is on Google searching for a turquoise turtleneck sweater.[00:10:36] You should be there targeting her. You should be buying that ad against Mary's search, right? Her click, you should be targeting her. And so really targeting lapse customers when they're searching for your product is a huge opportunity. We don't see clients carving out marketing dollars to really have that kind of proactive approach at customer reactivation on search, so I think that's a low hanging opportunity.[00:11:00] And then for definitely print. So all 400, you know, retailers and brands here, at Belardi Wong, are in the mail. They're leveraging direct mail and catalogs for customer retention. It's extremely effective. And driving up purchase frequency and revenue per customer and overall lifetime value. The great thing about print is that, you know, you've got a hundred percent reach.[00:11:22] So if you want to target Mary Jane who bought from you a year and a half ago she's gotta at least touch the piece to recycle it, so you've got a hundred percent reach. All of our data over the last year as we've looked at it, we've found that if you want to target a specific customer at a specific time within social, you've got about an 18% chance.[00:11:43] Basically, you've got an 18% chance of reaching who you want. When you want to on Facebook, and that's because you're competing with other advertisers for her impression. Mary Jane your customer only has so much impressions and frequency on Facebook and you're competing with other advertisers, and especially in our case, as I said, our clients tend to target, you know, affluent consumers and so Mary Jane is a great shopper and there's a lot of advertisers who want her impressions, and so you can't be sure that you're going to reach her.[00:12:13] And on email, you know, maybe you're lucky if you've got a 20, 25% open rate, but once you start looking at your lapse customers, maybe you've got a 10 or 15% open rate. And so the only way that you could make sure that you get a hundred percent reach is in the mail. And so we see this CRM toolbox with email, sms, social, search and print really is a major opportunity for D to C brands who built very expensive customer files at this point, to really lean into that as a major growth strategy.[00:12:42] Casey Golden: It seems so basic, but yet at the same time, like, but nobody's doing it. , Right. Is to like really go back into that core of, of all those customers.[00:12:54] Ricardo Belmar: And I, and I thought that a lot of these DTC would have used search when. came up, right, to try to get that initial customer acquisition. So I, I find it kind of curious that if, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I, it seems to me that that's one of the original tactics I expect to see DTC brands use at the start, maybe they don't come back to it, to your point.[00:13:15] Polly Wong: You know, we don't see a fine level of segmentation and targeting honestly, within digital media buying. You know, I, I think about digital media agencies and I think of them as master tinkerers, and I can almost just see all the people behind the scenes, almost like behind a clock, you know, turning the dial a little bit this way and a little bit that way.[00:13:33] And it's really about bids and CPMs and it's about creative and frequency and the type of ad. It's really not about. Okay, This is our cheerleader cohort. This is our loyalist cohort. This is our, you know, former cheerleader cohort meeting. This used to be a best customer, and now she's not a best customer.[00:13:52] What percent of our spend are we going to target against her? What should be the target cost to retain? You know, the industry talks about the target cost of acquisition, you know, the cost to acquire a new customer, but you never hear anyone talk about the cost to retain a customer. And I think we're gonna have to see a major shift in how people think.[00:14:11] I think that's the one thing in my, my 25 years in retail. I think there has to be an inherent pivot for D to C brands to embrace some of the real kind of retail operation discipline that has existed, you know, for many years and has allowed companies to exist for decades and to become billion dollar retailers.[00:14:30] And that definitely includes financial planning. It includes inventory planning, merchandise planning, and definitely really thinking about, you know, your target customer and your segmentation and CRM and how you're allocating those dollars.[00:14:46] Casey Golden: I always say, if you spent [00:14:49] half as much time retaining your customers as you spent all of these resources on acquiring them, you'd have a completely different business.[00:14:58] Polly Wong: Yeah. You know, and I think we we're seeing, I think it's actually kind of exciting. There are definitely always some D to C brands who are leading in the space and we see. Really three major growth strategies and definitely activating more channels for both CRM and for active acquisition. You know, testing TikTok, testing connected TV or streaming tv, leaning into print for both acquisition and crm.[00:15:22] And so definitely activating more marketing channels is an important opportunity for D to C brands. But also, I can emphasize enough, and I touched on this earlier, as a matter of fact, the more product you put in front of. Across categories and price points, the more revenue you will drive from her. And I always tell people, I learned two things in my years, at Williams Sonoma Inc.[00:15:45] When I was on the client side. The first is that the best way to drive response rates is to have a range of product across categories and price points. So, okay, you know, she bought a sofa from you, what is she gonna buy next? And that's why you see these types of brands have an incredible assortment in tabletop and seasonal decor and all of those other categories, bed and bath.[00:16:06] The second thing I learned at Williams Sonoma I tell people, is that on my second day on the job Chuck Williams himself, so I'm dating myself a little bit, he said to me, Polly, you know how you sell a $200 toaster? You put a $400 toaster next to it? And I never forgot that [00:16:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, it completely makes sense. I mean, I to, I have to give credit to William Sonoma, right? Who has, mastered that technique of positioning and curating the right selection at different price points to drive a particular one that you might wanna drive, I think they, I've an amazing job at doing that, and that's certainly a lesson a lot of DTC brands would need to learn.[00:16:40] And, and also kind of speaks. Theory, I've always put out that, you know, so many of these DTC brands that came to be, know, is digitally native, know, wanted to just disrupt one particular product they started with that one product and I always felt that, you know, the one question that does not get asked when they're seeing some initial success, right?[00:17:02] They're getting a lot of new customers, they weren't thinking through, okay, what's the frequency with which these customers I've paid to [00:17:10] Polly Wong: Yes. [00:17:11] Ricardo Belmar: now in some way are going to buy again the [00:17:14] Polly Wong: Yes, exactly. [00:17:17] How often? ,[00:17:18] Ricardo Belmar: most things people don't buy every week.[00:17:20] Polly Wong: Absolutely. So how often do you need to buy a mattress and how often do you need to buy a suitcase? Right? Thinking [00:17:26] Ricardo Belmar: Two. two, good examples.[00:17:27] Polly Wong: popular, [00:17:28] Ricardo Belmar: good examples. [00:17:28] Adopting Basic Retail Operations[00:17:28] Polly Wong: Brands that we've seen now struggle to grow. Absolutely. You know there are some really great smart brands out there. You know, we've seen a lot of the really high growth soft goods companies, so bedding companies, you know, there's a reason why they launch into lounge wear, right?[00:17:43] There's a reason why they launch into bath, right? So you see these bedding soft good companies launch into other categories because, okay, so I bought a set of sheets. I bought, you know, a beautiful comforter, but what am I gonna buy next from you? And you've seen home brands lean into apparel.[00:18:00] You've seen apparel brands lean into home. You know, we're going to continue to see that. Absolutely. But honestly, you know, we were just putting together some strategies internally for clients cuz there are, as I said earlier, a significant amount of headwinds, I think facing brands and retailers in the next six to 12 months.[00:18:18] There's a lot of really inexpensive ways that don't require a lot of research and development that don't require a lot of product development and long timelines. We were doing an assessment for a women's apparel company. And we were looking at their tops and we were looking at tops and the price points and the sizes and the colors of their competitive set.[00:18:38] And as we were looking at the tops, we realized, you know, you sell that long sleeve basic tee in four colors, but on average your competitors sell their long sleeve basic tee in eight to 10 colors. And also you sell yours for $8 more on average. And so maybe if you could take and just add color ways, take your top selling.[00:18:59] Products and add new colorways. Think about, you know, how much would a four, $6 price cut to be competitive? What kind of incremental revenue would that bring? And I think it's that type of merchandise analysis and merchandise planning and inventory management that honestly is a discipline that D to C brands don't inherently have.[00:19:17] So it's time, as I said earlier, to hire some good old fashioned retail operations [00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's an [00:19:22] That. an excellent point and [00:19:23] it's one that I think that has never been quite so obvious, right, to the DTC brands, because they had that single minded, I have this one product that we're gonna disrupt. It's this one product category, this one selection we're gonna disrupt. And there wasn't enough thought to, Well, what happens next? After you've done that? [00:19:37] I, do wanna ask you one question because you know, when Casey and I were thinking of, what we, we were gonna learn from you in this episode, and we thought, it really tells a story about that we think of as, you know, making old media, new media in a way, in a sense that as you've been describing to us now, different marketing mix and moving from a lot of pure.[00:19:57] Digital marketing spend to other perhaps more, more traditional, maybe some non-traditional, because I heard connected TV in there as well. But I'm really intrigued by the success your clients are having in print and with catalogs, which call that maybe the most traditional option a lot of brands can go with.[00:20:14] and when we've spoken to you before, you've mentioned that. When people hear catalog, sort of have an idea in their head of what that might look like. But what you're now with your, your, your clients is not exactly the same kind of format. I, I think it's a much. And maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what's evolved in this, in the print catalog space.[00:20:33] Polly Wong: Yeah. They're not your mother's catalogs anymore. You know, it used to be that you have a hundred page catalog and you've got, you know, five to 10 items per page and you put the whole store inside the catalog. And it used to be that, 80% of catalogs went to women over 55. And she only bought what she saw on the page.[00:20:51] And there's been just really a fundamental shift. First of all, there is a significant amount of print pieces folded pieces, catalogs going in home, The 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. And so now the catalog isn't something you, you shop from the, the catalog or the direct mail piece is a channel driver and it's driving her to the store to buy or is driving her to e-commerce to buy.[00:21:15] And over the years, as we've analyzed the results, we've seen and found that actually only about a third of the product that she buys after she gets the piece was depicted in the piece, meaning that two outta three times what she buys was not in the actual piece, but it drove her to the site or it drove her to the store.[00:21:34] So she thought she wanted one sweater, she got to the site, she bought a different sweater, So as we began to understand that there was a new purpose to print that really it was to drive her to a channel to engage and then to buy, right? Always measuring, of course, the ROAS, actually, I think it's ironic, catalogers were really the original D to C brands and catalogers were always performance based marketers.[00:21:57] So I like to throw that out there. But today, especially for our fashion clients and our home brand clients, definitely catalogs look more like look books they're more aspirational, more lifestyle photography, more storytelling. You know, we actually one of the most successful catalogs in history and the thousands and thousands and thousands of campaigns we measured, when you open up this catalog, the first two spreads are actually just really an aspirational story.[00:22:25] And yet it was extremely productive as measured by sales. And so really you're here to engage the customer and to drive her to a channel to buy, and that is the ultimate goal. Now, what we've found, depending on the product assortment, depending on the price point, depending on the target consumer, First of all, you don't have to send a full, so full, huge catalog anymore, right?[00:22:46] So most of our clients are sending catalogs that are maybe 28 or 36 pages, but not, you know, 80 plus pages. So you don't have to send her as many pages. You don't have to put the whole store. In the catalog, you wanna just say, Here's our our new products, here's our best sellers, and you wanna be compelling and you wanna send her to the channel to buy that she wants to buy in.[00:23:08] And then also we've seen a whole new lifeline because print is acting as this channel driver and you don't have to put the full assortment in front of her. We've seen an incredible amount of success with folded pieces. You know, here is our top five new products of the season. Check it out online, check it out in store.[00:23:25] And so we've found that there's a different messaging and creative strategy also because of this kind of new purpose and how consumers are interacting with print. And I should say that it, it has been an amazing ride. Really just, you know, hundreds of new brands in the mail the last couple of years.[00:23:42] But, you know, starting over a decade ago, we launched brands like Shutterfly, Minted, Revolve, Zappos, One Kings Lane. You know, we Allbirds, right? We started with Allbirds had zero customers. You know, over a decade ago we launched all of these brands into the mail. And so some folks I think already could see it, you know, early on.[00:24:03] I think what's happened is that the cost of digital marketing has become extremely competitive and saturated and promotional and expensive, and you can't always reach who you wanna reach. There's an amazing amount of real estate in print to tell your story and to put your product, and also it's effective for both.[00:24:20] Crm. I would say that mailing customers is like printing money, but also for new customer acquisition. We tend to work with premium brands and you know, to get someone to buy a $300 sweater from you when they've never heard of your brand before, the amount of real estate goes a long way in convincing new customers to buy.[00:24:36] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point cuz in those scenarios, right, you're really asking that new customer to buy your story as much as your product.[00:24:43] Polly Wong: Absolutely. And you know, I think there's an amount of credibility and authority just as stores give D to C brands credibility. I think the same is can be set of print and I like to say that millennials can spot a manufactured brand from a mile away. And I think that there's an amount of real estate that you have to tell your story.[00:25:03] And if it's authentic, like we have clients, brands like Outer known who just have incredible, authentic story around sustainability and apparel. And a really, you know, just a huge commitment to that as a business. And they're able to build that story with their community through print [00:25:19] On Opening Stores[00:25:19] Casey Golden: one of the initiatives that's been happening lately that has me very excited, just cuz I think we all kind of started in stores, is more of these digitally native brands or pure play brands actually opening up stores and more pop up. I'm a big advocate of the in-store experience. Not that many of us have had one lately, but with the world closed for a little bit.[00:25:42] But I think it's a great opportunity to actually connect. Are you, are you helping them essentially kind of understand where they should be potentially opening up stores or opening up popups or working on that strategy based on, because you guys know so much about where the consumer lives and that community, [00:26:02] Polly Wong: Certainly you can build models regarding, you know, around trade areas to understand where your customers are at today and where your perspective best customers are at. I think to answer your original question though, you know, around just this kind of continued push of D to C brands in stores, honestly, it's really, really very simple.[00:26:26] in any category, more than 50% of sales are still in physical stores. So if you're not selling either in your own stores or on the floor at Nordstrom's, for example, if you're not building your wholesale network, then you're missing out on 50% of your market. And so that's really what it comes down to. I think one of the things that I find more encouraging today about the retail landscape than I did before the pandemic.[00:26:54] Before the pandemic. You just saw almost an absurd level of store openings from DTC brands. Brands that were suddenly opening 20, 30, 40 stores a year. When you open stores that quickly, you're not going into just a markets, you're not negotiating the best real estate deals. You aren't taking the time to build the models to understand where your customers are and where your best.[00:27:17] New perspective customers are, but I think what's great to see is I'm seeing a more cautious approach. I'm seeing the D to C brands understand they need to have a physical footprint and that maybe at the same time, now they're only opening up five to seven stores a year. They're also exploring partnerships with department stores and other retailers to be on their floor.[00:27:38] We have so many brands that we work with who sell on the floor at Anthropology, for example. And so I think that most of our clients have realized you have to have that physical presence in order to reach your customer where she's at when she's shopping, and also because it's a significant business opportunity.[00:27:55] I also think, I mean, there's no question, you know, there is, I think, better real estate deals to be had in 'A' markets because of the amount of store closings in the last couple of years, I think there are still some significant opportunities in terms of finding the right space, the right price with the right consumer.[00:28:12] And so I think that's very encouraging. I think from what I've last seen, this is gonna be the first year in a very, very long time where the number of store openings will actually outpace the number of store closings [00:28:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. I kind of saw, you know, it's nice to see that this, this natural transition, essentially it's all coming back to all these different channels and touch points where there was that moment. where it's just like you just need to be online and everybody else is doing it wrong, and then you just see it come full circle where they're starting to join. We've already went through this cycle.[00:28:45] Polly Wong: Well, you said it yourself. Yeah, you said it yourself. What's old is new again, honestly, to me, advertising on podcasts, it's radio. to me, connected TV is TV advertising, right? Like it's all we've been through these channels. Even outdoor media is having a huge resurgence right out of home media. And so I think that, you know, what it really comes down to is that the most sophisticated marketers have realized that you need a channel mix.[00:29:13] Online, offline, you need to be where your customer is at. You need to have multiple distribution channels, you need to have multiple products. And I think that the high growth brands, you know, have realized that, and I think everyone else is beginning to learn as well.[00:29:25] On marketplaces [00:29:25] Ricardo Belmar: So let me ask you too, on, on, that Polly, one of the areas that I, I think is also interesting here is how these brands leverage different marketplaces you know, within that channel mix. I mean, what, what are your thoughts there and how do you advise brands around marketplaces?[00:29:39] Polly Wong: Definitely D to C brands have had a lot of, you know, trepidation around the marketplaces. I definitely think though that they're going to be forced to consider it. we've already found is, we've just discussed that you can't have an e-commerce only business. And so we saw these e-commerce brands open up stores, and then we saw them add wholesale partners. And so now really the last major distribution channel as a source of revenue growth is the marketplaces.[00:30:03] And historically, D to C brands have been very protective of their brand's message and of their new customers. And they don't want to let anyone kind of expose their brand other than how they want it presented. However, I do think that the pressure to continue to drive revenue with all of these headwinds and because the reality is that all consumers are on the marketplaces, and you know, now we've got Macy's leaning into their marketplace.[00:30:30] I mean, every single major retailer is going to have their own marketplace online as well. I think you have to be there. I think, you know, we're finding clients kind of tiptoe into it. They're testing different strategies. They might only put part of their assortment within the marketplaces. They might actually develop a specific collection for the marketplaces.[00:30:50] So definitely I think they're cautious. But I think that they're going to be forced to consider trying it in ways they might not have a few years ago because they've gotta drive revenue growth. And because there are so many, you know, headwinds, unfortunately at the moment,[00:31:05] Retail Media Networks[00:31:05] Ricardo Belmar: So one of the other big trends that we're talking about this season on our show are retail media networks. We've, dedicated an episode on it. I was just at the grocery shop event and that was a huge, huge trend there as well.[00:31:17] So I'm curious, what, what's your recommendation for brands around you know, whether it's with the marketplaces that they may be new to or as they're getting into stores and, and wholesale agreements there? How are you advising DTC brands around retail media networks?[00:31:31] Polly Wong: You know, it's interesting. I don't think that we'll see D to C brands leverage their own assets and their own impressions and their own emails and their own social for advertising income and revenue. Because D to C brands usually are not big enough to actually make it worthwhile to suddenly open up their own assets for advertising, but certainly as it relates to the really large retailers and the real large marketplaces, I don't know why you wouldn't choose to advertise there.[00:32:01] You know, in order to make that advertising work, those platforms have to offer the level of targeting and segmentation that will drive the performance to justify the CPMs and the media spend. Why would you not test it? I mean one, I think really positive quality of DTC brands is that usually they're willing to test anything.[00:32:19] And I think in this case, not only why would you not test it and consider it, as long as you know that your target consumer is there from a sociodemographic profile perspective. But in some cases, if you are going to play, for example, on the marketplaces, you have to buy media on the marketplaces. It's not like if you build that, they will come.[00:32:37] You've gotta have the advertising dollars to actually support your sales on the marketing place on the marketplace.[00:32:42] Casey Golden: for a lot of our listeners. I'm sure they've been nodding their heads as as you speak. There's a lot of question marks though still [00:32:49] for anybody who hasn't been looking at their, their media spend in this way. What should brands be looking at a D to C or D to C brands? Be looking at a media spend breakdown.[00:33:01] You know, what portion are you seeing more of a trend? Because we see it's so scary to move a portion of your business over to something new, even if it's starting to break, There's what are, what do you see more as a breakdown? Just so people can go ahead and make the shift and just close their eyes and go[00:33:21] Polly Wong: Yeah. large brands that we see, large brands and retailers that we see doing well, that are significant in size and have e-commerce and have stores, they've really shifted to almost a 40, 40 20 marketing mix where 40% of their spend is digital marketing. 40% is offline, which could include actually tv, radio, print, out of home media.[00:33:47] And then 20% is really PR partnerships, sponsorships, influencers, you know, things around content and community. So, You know, to 40% across the digital channels, 40% across all kind of other, you know non-digital channels. And then what's really encouraging to see and smaller brands can't afford often to spend, you know, top of funnel.[00:34:12] But as a matter of fact, high growth brands do spend top of funnel. And so you'll see the. Companies are beginning to carve out 10 to 20% of their spend. So they get the pr, they get the influencers, they get the sponsorships and the partnerships that allows them to build community.[00:34:27] Launching Direct Mail[00:34:27] Casey Golden: So if there's a, if there's a direct to consumer brand right now that's listening what's the ballpark range they'd need to be? Looking at for budgeting to launch a campaign a, a direct mail campaign.[00:34:40] Polly Wong: Okay. Well, I thought you were gonna ask a bigger picture question. What percent of top line revenue do you have to spend high growth, emerging brands are spending, you know, 20 to 25% of top line revenue on marketing. Mature businesses spend closer to 10 to 15% of top line revenue on marketing and big retailers and wholesale brands might only spend, you know, six to 10% of their top line revenue on marketing.[00:35:10] But definitely if you're an emerging DTC brand today, you're definitely spending 20 to 25% of your top line revenue. So for every hundred dollars, you're spending 20 to 25 dollars. To get that. So just in terms of what you have to spend as an emerging brand to get traction. Absolutely. If you think you can build a brand from scratch that's spending, you know, $10 on the a hundred dollars, it'll never happen.[00:35:34] Unfortunately, those days are, are past us in terms of, you know, really testing print, well here at Ballardi Wong, we only, you know, we run the largest, you know, Scalable, sophisticated programs in the country. So we don't do anything small, cheaper, schlossky. So we're, we're a little bit more on the premium side here . Really to get.[00:35:52] A solid proof of concept with all of the industry best practices in place for both CRM and acquisition. You're looking at about a 75 to a hundred thousand dollars test in print and we've launched over 250 DTC brands into the mail successfully. And even little baby ones with a few thousand customers and they're all spending that much money.[00:36:11] So on their first campaign still less expensive, you know, still half as much as a three week TV campaign. So,[00:36:18] Casey Golden: mean hey, I mean, I mean that could just be one post by a tick, a certain, a couple TikTok influencers too. So, I [00:36:25] mean, you [00:36:26] know, [00:36:26] Polly Wong: That's the, you know, here's the ironic thing. You can put a beautiful full size catalog in front of a consumer for 85 cents. Your cost per click nowadays is, you know, two or $3. So the thing that's really crazy is that you can mail. 4, 5, 6 catalogs to a highly targeted audience for the cost of one click.[00:36:47] So I think that that's, you know, it seems expensive, but actually, quality touch, yes, it's [00:36:54] Casey Golden: I agree. And it's really just being able to say like, instead of spending that hundred k, the 200,000 on this, let's just go ahead and move it over here and run a test. Because I think everything that you've really kind of ran through through this conversation and what you guys are doing is just, it's, it's incredibly compelling. And it's a lot of things that potentially these customer bases or the brands are just not as familiar with because they don't have a lot of seasoned retailers in their company orgs. And so a lot of it, we see somebody doing something or like, you really only have one product. Like you do realize that there's like issues with this who gave you. You know, and then now those [00:37:43] conversations [00:37:44] Polly Wong: think, well, you know what's gonna be really interesting to see is that it's not gonna be very easy. We're already finding this. We actually do due diligence on D to C transactions because of all of our experience at Belardi Wong. And not this summer, but last summer we worked on six transactions, and this summer we didn't work on any transactions.[00:38:03] I think very quickly. It's going to be a very tough landscape for raising dollars at this moment in time. And already the industry has become a little bit weary because some of the evaluations and the losses that have happened over the last couple of years. And so I think companies are gonna have to be scrappier and smarter because it's not gonna be so easy to get someone to give you, you know, 20, $30 million just like that. [00:38:25] Casey Golden: Yeah. no, I mean yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I, I think that this is, I'm really excited to see some comments once this kind of goes, gets pushed out because I know that this is gonna be some new content that they haven't really thought about as even an option think it's [00:38:39] Using Influencers [00:38:39] Ricardo Belmar: I I, do wanna go back to one thing that you mentioned in the 40 40 20 split where you had in that 20%, you know, kind of lump together in, in pr, things like influencers, and that tends to get a lot of attention. Around, you know, what brands are spending with influencers and how they're using them.[00:38:56] Are they on TikTok yet? What? are you seeing there that's actually successful?[00:39:01] Polly Wong: You know, the truth is, is that for most clients you know, influencers can reach a small target community. But we haven't seen for most clients a huge amount of scale unless you're willing to spend, a few hundred thousand dollars, with an influencer who really has significant reach and real influence on what consumers are buying.[00:39:25] We just haven't found that for most of our clients, that actually influencers can drive any kind of sustainable scale. So maybe you pay a lot of money and you know, Mary Jane, the influencer does a series of posts maybe over two weeks about some of your new product. Maybe you get a momentary surge in sales, but it's not sustainable and you can't continue to spend those kinds of dollars for those really high touch posts. And so the one challenge that we do find with influencer marketing is it takes a lot of leg work to implement and it is often not truly scalable. It's also kind of interesting to see what's going on on TikTok, because definitely, you know, that that cut meta spend is shifting to TikTok. But TikTok is also hard to measure for the same reasons that it's hard to measure meta, right? Because of platform changes and challenges. And for the most part, because it's hard to measure the return on ad spend, on TikTok, it tends to be a top of funnel channel. Well, I can tell you that in a recession the money for top of funnel marketing is going to dry up very quickly.[00:40:37] And so you're gonna be focused on those channels that can drive real performance and ROAS because you just don't have enough funding to, to, to, to spend on those top channels. So it'll be really interesting to see, over the next six months how advertising dollars shift around. I usually feel pretty comfortable giving my predictions for retail sales and e-commerce sales, but honestly, at this point, just hand me an ball. I have [00:41:01] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's where [00:41:02] Polly Wong: I'm gonna continue to be I'm gonna continue to cross my fingers and my toes and hope that at least for our clients, that affluent consumers are still spending [00:41:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And so, so on what you just said, right around top of funnel and those, is there an argument to be made that if you're going to spend on influencers or TikTok, that you're, you might wanna save that for when you have a new product launch versus just trying to drive sales of an existing product? [00:41:27] Polly Wong: Absolutely. It's not something [00:41:29] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Because you scale it right [00:41:31] Polly Wong: you're gonna turn it on. You can't, you're gonna, you're gonna turn it on maybe three or four times. You know, in the world of retail, we think about five seasons winter. Spring, summer, fall, and holiday. And so you're really going to lean in just a few weeks of each season into your influencer marketing and that spend and really, lean into your peak sales curve to drive those new product sales and to get that reach.[00:41:55] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. If that makes sense. That makes complete sense. So, so last question for you Polly, and if, someone were to come and ask you right now, what's your top recommendation when you think about growth strategies for a DTC brand, what would you tell 'em?[00:42:07] Polly Wong: Considering the economic uncertainty, the headwinds and the rising costs across the entire p and l, I would say that my top two recommendations are to one, lean into crm. Make sure that you're activating all five channels targeting your existing customer base, and then two, Because you're targeting your existing customers, continue to focus on your product category expansion, you know, what is your range of product across categories and price points.[00:42:37] Consumers may start spending down they may be more value focused than ever. So, you know, what is your good, better, best merchandise strategy, right? Not only are you adding simple things like more color skews to your long sleeve t-shirt, but you know, is there a good, better, best strategy for your product?[00:42:53] Motorcycle clients we've have worked with have done this extremely well. There's a good, better, best motorcycle helmet and the best one has got bluetooth and all kinds of fun things in it. And in, in addition to keeping your, your, your head safe. So definitely I think, leaning into your customer file is a tremendous, profitable asset.[00:43:11] And then just giving existing customers more to buy. I do think there's plenty of time to lean into new customer acquisi. You know, as we begin to see some of the, the economic uncertainty clear up, hopefully by spring, I actually am quite confident that I do think things will level out and I think we'll be back sailing along by spring of 2023 is, is my hope.[00:43:33] So fingers crossed. [00:43:34] Ricardo Belmar: I think you maybe, may be right about that. And it kind of says that if I kind of read into, the two areas you highlighted for a lot of DTC brands, there's probably some new hires they need to look for to help them with those strategies, particularly around merchandising those new products.[00:43:47] Products like you talked about earlier.[00:43:49] Polly Wong: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you have to, and also to pay attention to the competition. You know, it's amazing to me. I think brands do tend to be inwardly focused and. You know, maybe now people will have the time and to kind of step back and say, how does my assortment look compared to my competitors?[00:44:06] What are my price points? What are my size ranges? What are my number of colors? You know what is my returns policy? You know, how do I stand up against the competition? Everybody's gonna have to just be a little bit smarter. [00:44:16] Ricardo Belmar: I think that's another great point. I mean, I, even on for traditional retailers, I, I can't count how many times in the past I've been in, in a room with retailers and asked them, Well, when was the last time you walked one of your competitors' stores to see what they were doing? you know, I, I, I don't know sometimes whether I wanted to laugh or cry at the fact that they were just crickets in the room and nobody responded when I asked that question.[00:44:38] so there's definitely some truth to that.[00:44:40] Polly Wong: Absolutely. [00:44:43] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thank you So [00:44:44] discuss. I'm probably gonna go down as one of the, our, our most commented episodes with so much in good information and, and advice and I think really unique details that you've helped surface here for, for DTC brands as they grow into, I would call becoming a, full channel retailer in a sense.[00:45:03] and really didn't, know, cover a lot of ground around making old media, new media, like we started to talk about earlier.[00:45:09] Polly Wong: Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been fun this afternoon to connect with you and I, I hope you both have a, a lovely fall season.[00:45:16] Casey Golden: Definitely. For our listeners who have been furiously taking notes during this episode, what's the best reach way for them to reach out to you or follow your company?[00:45:26] Polly Wong: Yeah, obviously we're on the social channels, but if you wanna reach out through the contact us page at Belardi Wong, if you would like to talk to me directly or have any questions or comments for me directly, I know that they'll, they'll make their way to me and I'm always happy to chat and connect.[00:45:39] Casey Golden: Great.[00:45:40] Ricardo Belmar: Well, thank you again, Polly, for joining us. We hope to have you back soon.[00:45:43] Polly Wong: Thank you so much. Have a great one.[00:45:45] Casey Golden: You too. That's a wrap, Ricardo.[00:45:48] Show Closing[00:45:48] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. [00:46:18] Ricardo Belmar: And if you'd like to learn more about the two of us, follow us on Twitter at Casey c golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure to follow the show on LinkedIn and Twitter at retail razor. Plus our YouTube channel for videos of each episode and bonus content. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:46:35] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.[00:46:36] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter until next time, this is the retail razor show. 

Interested in the metaverse and need to know how to get started? Meet Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVrse, multiple TED Talk speaker, and builder of “The Mall” in the metaverse, but not just any mall! If there were a hundred-page encyclopedia of the metaverse, Alan would fill every page but you'd still need more room to cover his vast knowledge of all things metaverse. It's season 2, episode 4, and we're continuing our Retail Transformers series – you'll see why Alan Smithson is truly more than meets the eye!Alan tells you what you need to get started with the metaverse, but takes us on an even deeper journey that touches on the future of jobs in digital technologies, how education needs to change to keep up, how the metaverse could make the world a better place, and of course, why shopping should be fun again! Plus, we'll learn why asking children what they want to be when they grow up is the wrong question to ask. The real question is …News alert! We're back at #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we'll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS2E4 Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson[00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro[00:00:00] Alan Smithson: Good morning. Retail Razor. No, maybe too much. [00:00:05] Ricardo Belmar: actually we might, we might use that at the, in the intro beginning. [00:00:07] That was pretty [00:00:08] Good. ..That [00:00:09] Alan Smithson: like bit connect . I wanna go to a crypto conference and start doing that. Bit connect[00:00:17] Ricardo Belmar: Now that would be fun to see. [00:00:19] Alan Smithson: Too early maybe. Okay. We'll just start now. [00:00:21] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. All right, here we go. Here we go. [00:00:23][00:00:23] Introduction[00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: hello, and welcome to season two, episode four of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:00:49] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.[00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: And we have a truly special treat this week. Following up from our season debut episode on the Metaverse, we are back to talk more metaverse this week, aren't we?[00:01:10] Casey Golden: Yes, and I'm excited. Our listeners and viewers should be excited because this week we're not only talking Metaverse, but we're continuing our Retail Transformer series with special guest, Alan Smithson, founder and CEO of the company, Metaverse.[00:01:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yes. Our faithful followers will learn exactly why Alan is 'more than meets the eye'.[00:01:31] Casey Golden: Aww, you're gonna use that line, every time for these series, aren't you?[00:01:35] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely, a hundred percent. I am totally here for that.[00:01:39] Casey Golden: Okay, so let's talk about Alan. There are few people in the early days of the Metaverse that can talk in depth about what retailers need to look at when building their metaverse strategy.[00:01:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, when we first talked to Alan, you know, when he first came to one of our clubhouse rooms, I was really impressed. And just like you said, he's got the knowledge about the metaverse. We'll also hear about his solution, the mall, that he's building, that will really change how retailers look at the metaverse.[00:02:03] And listeners or viewers are gonna come away with a really smart plan on, on how to attack the metaverse and get experimenting right away, just like we predicted back in season one episode four.[00:02:13] Casey Golden: And experimenting, and experimenting, trying things out is a matter of showing up and learning how to experiment. Alan hits on all of these topics and more honestly, each episode this season has been incredibly informative, but our guest energy is solid, true innovators. I don't know how we keep doing this from one episode to another, but keep those notepads handy.[00:02:35] You'll need it.[00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. I mean, we could go on and on about all the juicy details Alan will talk about, but I think I can sum it up by saying if you were gonna write a hundred page Encyclopedia of the Metaverse, Alan would be on page one all the way through page 100, and you'd probably be asking for more pages after that.[00:02:54] Casey Golden: Agreed, so let's get to it then. Our interview with Alan Smithson co-founder of MetaVrse. [00:03:04] AlanSmithson Interview[00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: And we are here with our very special guest, Alan Smithson, co-founder of the company MetaVrse, whose mission is to enable creation in the Metaverse for everyone. Following from our clubhouse session in our season one opener on the Metaverse and one of what's likely to be many more discussions we'll have on the metaverse going forward.[00:03:23] Alan, welcome to the Retail Razor Show. [00:03:25] Alan Smithson: Thank you so much, Ricardo and Casey. Thanks for having me. This is so, so exciting. You know, we we got to meet in person before these things, which is super cool, you know, and normally it's the other way around. You do all these podcasts and things, and then you finally meet somebody, you're like, Oh, yeah.[00:03:38] So it's really great to see some familiar faces and, and dive into the, the Occam's razor of retail .[00:03:46] Ricardo Belmar: exactly[00:03:47] Casey Golden: I'm so glad to see you Allen and having you here with us this morning. I'm just really excited to catch up and learn what's been going on since the last time we saw each other. [00:03:59] We're [00:03:59] Alan Smithson: many things. [00:04:00] Casey Golden: right. We're not casting from the, the metaverse yet. But who knows? This time next year, a seismic shift is taking [00:04:06] Alan Smithson: time next week we're gonna be releasing some cool stuff and we built in full video chat capabilities into our project. So we'll get into that later. But yeah, the three pushed some technology that will allow us to do this inside of virtual world.[00:04:21] Casey Golden: Interesting. Yes. Experiences on the internet are expected to be more immersive, three dimensional and virtual with the realization of web three . I believe the metaverse will will play , an integral role in product discovery and brand experiences.[00:04:36] Some people are saying it's dead and now it's like coming back. Some people said it's, this is just natural traction. So I mean, I think we're all here for the dips and we're all here for the eyes.[00:04:47] Alan Smithson: I really love the articles that say, you know, the Meta versus Dead or, you know, these are the same articles that in 10 years from now, people will look back and go, Oh yeah, you, you're the guy who wrote the internet as dead article. Good for you. You know, that really inspired a whole generation of people to build the internet, so, [00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's like how many years ago when everybody was saying physical retail was dead,[00:05:09] Alan Smithson: I mean, yeah, like you can say everything's dead. Look, when we invented tv, people said, Oh, this is gonna replace radio. Every car still has a radio in it. [00:05:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:05:21] Alan Smithson: like, radio didn't go away. It just changed and morphed. And you know, now we, now we have Spotify. Okay, maybe radio is not the primary thing, but it never died.[00:05:32] You know, TVs didn't go away when we got the internet. You know computers didn't go away when we got mobile phones. And, you know, mobile phones aren't going away anytime when we get VR and, and AR glasses. So, you know, adding new mediums does not necessarily mean that you, the other one fades away and dies, you know, it just becomes another medium.[00:05:51] There's, , let's say 10 years ago you had, I don't know, a billion people on the internet. Now we have 4 billion people on the Internet. Like, you know, the, the time right now is, is explosive growth. I mean, companies are raising, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars for internet technologies and metaverse technologies and web three technologies.[00:06:14] You know, this is just the money going in to invest to the future. So, I mean, we're in for a, a really, really interesting next, I guess, eight years now that we're almost kind of at the end of 2022. , By the end of this decade, the world will look very different than it does today,[00:06:30] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Yeah,[00:06:31] Casey Golden: I agree with that a hundred percent.[00:06:33] Ricardo Belmar: so, [00:06:34] Alan Smithson: none of the things will be dead.[00:06:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. No, none. None of it. We're just keep adding more and more I think as we're gonna get [00:06:39] into [00:06:39] Alan Smithson: more people coming on the[00:06:40] internet and more [00:06:41] Casey Golden: I'm [00:06:41] all [00:06:41] Alan Smithson: I like reading. [00:06:42] Casey Golden: web, like 6.0 already, right?[00:06:45] Alan Smithson: Why don't we have six G? I mean, my 5G phone doesn't really do anything for me. I'm like, 5g. I still have no signal. What the heck?[00:06:55] Casey Golden: It's still a marketing boy.[00:06:57] Alan Smithson: I bought a big phone that folds in half so that I can have all the things[00:07:02] Ricardo Belmar: And you're still waiting. And you're still [00:07:04] Alan Smithson: That's the wait. I still[00:07:05] Ricardo Belmar: so [00:07:06] Alan Smithson: but the technology's getting super fast. The the one thing that's exciting that. Most people are consuming the internet on a mobile phone now. Mobile phones and computers are the kind of dominant, but mobile phones kind of leapfrogged and it's places like Africa. They, they just bypass computers altogether and just went straight to phones.[00:07:22] Same with China. And so the phone technology is[00:07:25] Casey Golden: say, with 10 year olds,[00:07:27] Alan Smithson: exactly. 10 year olds in the Chinese, they, they just bypass computers all together.[00:07:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:07:33] Alan Smithson: But yeah, the, the world is using mobile phones to access the internet, and the mobile phones are getting so good. You know, the iPhone 14 came out y. These things are super, super computers now.[00:07:45] I mean, if you, One of the people that I, I really think highly of is a guy that runs this company called Otoy. They're a rendering engine and I can't remember the guy's name, but they came up with this concept of the render token. This was way before the whole crypto craze, and they said, What if we could tap into everybody's phone and computer and do batch rendering around the world?[00:08:06] So let's say Disney as a project, right? And they, you know, they need 500 servers to, to run this, you know scene of a Disney movie. Well, can't we then just push it out to a thousand phones, Have everybody, you know use the GPUs that are bit, you know, kinda sitting idle for most of the time on your phone.[00:08:22] Can we leverage that and then pay people for, for using this idle time on their phones?[00:08:27] seem to take off because I think it was a bit early, but that ability to tap into the billions of smartphones and computers out there and the processing power that is sitting idle, I think is going to be a key part of the metaverse moving forward in, in kind of the long term strategy. I mean, this is not, it's not an overnight thing. Nobody's really figured it out yet. But if we can do that, you think of how many computers around the world we could tap into for ai, for modeling, for protein folding for, you know, the good of mankind.[00:08:55] We can really use these these idle devices that are sitting idle for, you know, let's say most people, their phones are only sitting idle while they sleep, but[00:09:04] you know, it's, eight hours of sleep, depending on who you are. Casey, who only sleeps four hours a night,[00:09:12] What is MetaVrse & The Mall[00:09:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Well, Alan, so, diving into this space a little bit more, tell us a little more about what Metaverse is in your company and what you're doing and what you're and what that means for retailers and brands.[00:09:24] Alan Smithson: So we we started a company called Metaverse back in 2016, spelled M e t A V R s E, you know, for the vr idea, we built all sorts of projects in, in virtual, augmented, mixed reality, and 3d. We've done over 160 projects now but we've done everything from building retail locations virtual stores.[00:09:43] We've done virtual showrooms for automotive. We have built virtual training for, for medical, for consumer electronics. We did a lot of work for Samsung where we took their their new phone models, actually including this one, and then we animated them opening and you could turn it around and, you know, look inside and all this stuff.[00:09:59] We did a bunch of stuff for Samsung. We built virtual showrooms for MasterCard, but all of these things were actually built on our own engine. And so over the years we actually were building and working on our. What you would call a game engine or a creation platform. So similar to Unity and Unreal we have our own base, you know, rendering technology that allows us to render directly to the internet, directly to a web browser on a mobile phone.[00:10:24] So one of the, the claims to fame for us is that we have a low code, easy to create platform that bypasses the app stores. We actually don't have to go through Apple or Google. We just hit publish. It goes to a browser and works on any device. So this is super powerful and we really set up a goal in mind to build a platform that would let anybody participate and create in the Metaverse.[00:10:47] And so our mission is Metaverse creation for every. That's you know, that's always kind of been our ethos. It used to be XR creation for everyone, and then the whole world moved to the word metaverse. So we're like, Okay, well I guess we should jump on the bandwagon. Even though we started the bandwagon,[00:11:01] Casey Golden: What was xr [00:11:02] Alan Smithson: virtual augmented mixed reality or XR or extended reality is like a[00:11:06] Ricardo Belmar: yeah,[00:11:06] so it mixed, all of it[00:11:08] Alan Smithson: Yeah, I mean, we, we were all in on xr. We did the XR for Business podcast. We did the XR for Learning podcast. We did XR collaboration, which is a whole thing on, you know, collaboration platform. . We really, truly thought the whole world was going to xr and then outta nowhere Zuckerberg said, Hey, we're gonna be called Meta.[00:11:24] And the whole world went to Metaverse and we're like, Oh, well it's a good thing. We called our name That, and applied for the trademark before then[00:11:30] Ricardo Belmar: Ha. Good thing.[00:11:31] What moment led to creating MetaVrse?[00:11:31] Casey Golden: What was that one moment? Where you're just, cuz you've had some other businesses, you've had some worked in some other spaces. But what was that, that moment? Was there a special aha moment or something where [00:11:44] Alan Smithson: yeah. [00:11:44] Casey Golden: you're just like, I'm gonna build like the next version of the world,[00:11:48] Alan Smithson: It was a combination of things. Casey, honestly, it we owned a, a DJ product company called Emulator where it was a big glass, see-through touchscreen that you could play on and you could perform, but the crowd could see what you're doing cuz it was a see through piece of glass that you were DJing on.[00:12:01] We worked with, you know, infected Mushroom and Morgan page. And actually just recently a year ago Jean Michelle Jarre did a huge New Year's Eve virtual New Year's Eve party. It was huge. 7 million people attended and he used our emulator on stage in the virtual world as well.[00:12:15] So, I mean, we built this piece of tech.[00:12:17] We brought it to the world. We were working with big artists. And then we unfortunately brought on the wrong investor and so we lost that company. But right before that happened, I got invited to perform at Curiosity Camp by Eric Schmidt. And Eric Schmidt is, you know, obviously the former CEO of Google and he has this camp that everybody goes to called Curiosity Camp.[00:12:36] And so you go there and it's like camp in the middle of nowhere. I performed, it was kinda like a mini burning man for like 150 entrepreneurs, investors. AI nerds and a bunch of really smart people getting together just to have an UN-conference about what's coming in the world and, and, you know, new economic models and new technology models and these types of things.[00:12:55] So I got to perform. And then after that, I tried the R for the first time in this tiny little tent. And I remember putting it on, it was like a giant brick putting on my head. It was the DK one, the Oculus, and this was in 2014. Put on these giant headphones. And I sat there and they turned it on. And I remember sitting there going, Oh, like having this gasp of, Oh my God, this is amazing.[00:13:14] And I remember staring and I was looking at a concert, but it was so visceral that I felt like I was at the concert. The sound sounded right and, and I just sat there and I was like, Wow. And I remember somebody taking their hand and putting them on my shoulder, and I was on a swivel chair and they turned me around like this, and I realized that I could look everywhere. I was like, Oh my God. I could see the ceiling and the lights and the floor, and I just looked every. Then they hit a button and put me on stage, like I was up in the crowd. And then all, I was standing on stage next to Beck, looking at the artist, hearing it from my ears, looking up the crowd. And I thought, Oh my God.[00:13:49] And as a DJ myself for 20 years, I had this kind of moment where I was like, Holy crap. They just put me on stage in a place where nobody in the world gets to stand. Think about that. You know, like only the artists and the band or the DJ and maybe his manager get to stand on stage. Nobody gets to see this . And by transporting me in vr, I was there and I was like, This is gonna change everything, everything.[00:14:13] And that's, you know, right after that, we kinda lost the company, the, the DJ company. And I said, Well, let's just get into this now. And so in 2014 we started working in VR and we 3D printed our own cameras. We, we had 360 cameras built out of GoPros. We did everything. We did 360 videos. We did AR apps.[00:14:30] We did projection sandbox where you, you had connects and you, if you dug the sand out, it actually projected different things like topography of the sand. Did a VR photo booth for Samsung, which is super cool. We use their camera and you could take a picture with you and your friends and would Photoshop you into space, so you jump outta the machine and you could look at yourself in space with your friends in vr.[00:14:50] Casey Golden: That's great. So like as soon as you got like that one exposure hit, [00:14:54] it [00:14:55] Alan Smithson: that was it. That was.[00:14:56] Casey Golden: we're going this way,[00:14:57] Alan Smithson: Oh yeah. You know, I, I kind of had this thought that this is the future of human communication. This was like, okay, if I'm gonna communicate with somebody from long distance and we can stand there and like put these glasses on and be in the same room, this is gonna be the future of human communication.[00:15:11] And that was my whole ethos. I've since expanded that because, you know, and even if you go on our website, metavrse.com, we say that the Metaverse engine is the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce, and culture, because if you kind of take all of those four, that's really where we are right now.[00:15:29] The metaverse is impacting these things. So yes, we can communicate better, we can have a sense of presence, we can collaborate. You know, the, the new Bugatti was just designed in nine months rather than three years because they used VR to collaborate. You know BMW's been using VR to calibrate all the automotive companies are using it, not just to sell things, but to create.[00:15:47] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, to build,[00:15:48] to help them build faster. [00:15:49] Alan Smithson: so you know, collaboration is gonna be a big part. And then commerce, obviously 3D retail, duh. I mean, you know, Shopify's already showing in 96% improve, you know, uptick in conversion rates when using 3D on a site versus just 2D images and videos. So we're gonna go to 3D for sure.[00:16:09] Everything in the world, every brand, every company in the world will need all of their products and assets. Converted to 3D into 3D worlds, and over the next, you know, by the end of the decade, let's say. And that's a challenge because, you know, how do you convert them? Do you take CAD models and change them into 3d?[00:16:27] Do you take photographs and try to use photogrammetry? Do you use the scanners that are coming in the phones now? Do you use AI just using photographs to convert to 3d? So I think the biggest challenge over the next, you know, eight years or 10 years, end of the decade, This technology is showing massive upticks and, and conversion rates and all of the things from training to marketing to retail to e-com.[00:16:48] All of these things are being impacted positively, really positively, but it's still hard to make them. It's still hard to create the 3D worlds, the 3D environments avatars, clothing for avatars, these types of things. And so I think we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible. But AI is going to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next decade [00:17:07] Casey Golden: That's great.[00:17:08] Nexus of Three Technologies[00:17:08] Alan Smithson: I recently wrote an article called The Metaverse is the nexus of these three technologies. And the article, it, it's kinda like you have to read halfway through the article before I talk about them, because you know what, A little leading thing there. But the idea is that you have three technologies in addition to the internet we have today.[00:17:24] So the internet today, we have the ability to have video and audio and record and all these things that we're doing now, but then you wanna have depth, you wanna be able to walk around a virtual world. So it has 3D or XR vr, right? So you've that 3D component we call xr. Then you've got ai, which is gonna be, you know, natural language processing for maybe you wanna talk to a character, maybe you wanna get help in the store.[00:17:44] You can have conversations. Then computer vision, maybe you wanna see a product and you're like, What does that look like in my house? I hit a button, it changes the camera. Now I can see that couch in my house because the camera itself is using computer vision to understand my living room. Actually, IKEA came up with this really cool thing.[00:18:00] A quick video of your house and it blocks stuff out. Like it'll take your existing couch out and put the new one in for you. You're like, Whoa, this is crazy. So[00:18:08] computer [00:18:08] Casey Golden: love AR for home goods, like for furniture. I mean,[00:18:12] Alan Smithson: So you've got, you know, this 3D ar and then you've got ai, which, you know, kind of enables all that. And the new AI algorithms are allowing you to we have one called in World where you can talk to characters, and the other one that we're looking at right now is anything world.[00:18:26] And the idea is that, Use a text description and it will build a 3D environment for, you can say, I, I need a room with four walls, five windows, a tree in the corner, and a couch over here, and it will build it for you. Now it's very low poly and it's, it's not, you know, it's not perfect, but it's, it's automatic.[00:18:44] It's kinda like, you know, Have you seen Mid Journey and Dall-e yet[00:18:47] Casey Golden: I love Mid Journey. I've been playing on there until like I ran out of [00:18:52] Alan Smithson: credits [00:18:52] Casey Golden: could play [00:18:54] Alan Smithson: I was like,[00:18:55] What the amount of credits, Here's my credit,[00:18:57] my [00:18:57] money, [00:18:58] Casey Golden: do it again. I was having so much fun with it. [00:19:01] and it. [00:19:02] Alan Smithson: and licensing. So like, why would I ever go to a stock photography site ever again? Because I say, Okay, I need, the other day I said I needed a metaverse, whatever. I typed in whatever I, you know, description. It gave me a couple. I was like, not happy. I did it again. I was like, Oh, that one's nice. I up resd it and now that's the image for my article.[00:19:20] Casey Golden: Yeah,[00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: it's exactly what you wanted. [00:19:22] Casey Golden: I, actually think that it's brilliant that if I could just go ahead and create one. and then it would create like 500 versions.[00:19:31] Alan Smithson: Oh, I'm sure that's coming. I,[00:19:33] I'm sure. [00:19:33] Casey Golden: I'm just like, okay, I like this, but like, don't gimme one now I want like a set of four. Well, you know what, just gimme a set of 500.[00:19:41] Alan Smithson: Yep. You know, this was a really good processing power at that point[00:19:45] because these images, so you know, instead of four it can generate 400. It's, this is the thing with ai, if people don't understand, it's just raw processing power. That's why if we can tap into the phones around the world, You know, use some of this idle processing power, then you just have more power available to do it.[00:20:01] Because right now it's kind of expensive, right? You, you put in a request through mid journey, it goes up to their cloud. Somebody's gotta pay for, you know, an actual computer to process that. Create these four or five or 400 images for incident em back. Anyway, the last technology that we didn't touch on, so xr, ai, and the last one's blockchain. know, how do you have a decentralized ownership of assets? How do you have a record of maybe, you know, maybe you just want something simple like a record of your employment or your record of the things you took for training. Cuz right now you go to university, you have a degree, right? That degree is held by, let's say, you know, let's just use Harvard, right?[00:20:36] Harvard holds your degree. You now put on your, on your LinkedIn, Hey, I went to Harvard at, you know, there Now does, do employers go and verify that? Do they go to Harvard? Chances are, or they. a lot of times. So maybe having a, you know, verified way to not only take your degree, but all the courses that you took.[00:20:53] Maybe you took a course on Udemy or Udacity or you, you did a side course. The side courses are really the skills that you're gonna need, because that's why people are taking, that's why people are learning on YouTube, because right now the world's moving faster than the universities, colleges, and high schools can keep up, and so the curriculums have to go through rigorous vett.[00:21:13] By the time they go through that, it's maybe two, three years, the technology's already passed and like moved on. So we're kinda in this weird technology meets, you know, learning model. And actually I did a TED talk called the, the Marriage of Technology and Education and where I just said, Look, we should be using all these technologies that are, that we're inventing not only to train people on those technologies and how to use them, but use them for this, for for learning.[00:21:39] So we should be using AI algorithm. To do this, and actually something I read yesterday, you know, the company Striver s Str r ivr, they do all the training in VR for Walmart. They've trained over a million people for Walmart. And one of the things they said in their early Stanford hit Human Interaction Lab, the, the early study they did was a teacher, very simple study.[00:22:00] They had a teacher and two students, and they were all represented as avatars in VR. Now the teacher is looking at a student, right? So they have eye contact with the student. But imagine the avatar can look at both students equally. So even though the teacher may not be looking at either student, maybe looking down the middle, the avatar looks like it's looking right at you.[00:22:19] And so you have this personal one-on-one connection, even though it's one to many. And so you imagine if a, a class of a hundred people, everybody feels like you're looking directly at them, and this is super powerful.[00:22:31] Casey Golden: That's [00:22:31] interesting. Yeah, I think that, you education versus application. It's definitely behind. I don't feel like we're, we're really preparing kids for work or to understand what the career opportunities are because it's just so antiquated of yet you don't have to do that anymore. Like, these are all the new jobs in that space, under that topic that literally nobody's talking about.[00:22:58] So I think it's very interest. I asked a, a nine year old before the pandemic, which I'm like, So what do you wanna do? Like when you grow up, right? The, the, the number one question. And she just like, shrugged and pushed back on the pool and like, went backwards. 11. She's like, It doesn't really matter.[00:23:19] It's not like they'll ex, they won't exist anymore by the time I need it. [00:23:25] I just mind [00:23:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Wow.[00:23:28] Yeah. [00:23:28] Alan Smithson: think that the key to this is asking a different question. The different question is, is this instead of what do you wanna do when you grow up? Or what job do you want to get? Because we don't know what the jobs are gonna be. We don't, we're inventing them as we go. And something like, I read a stat, something like 60% of jobs over the next decade won't exist,[00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right.[00:23:46] Yeah. [00:23:46] Alan Smithson: So what are we training people[00:23:47] for? [00:23:48] We don't [00:23:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. We don't [00:23:48] Casey Golden: a nine year old to tell me that.[00:23:50] Ricardo Belmar: we, We don't even know. That's why we need better tools, Right. To be able to do [00:23:53] What problem do you want to solve?[00:23:53] Alan Smithson: so here's the better question to ask in my opinion, is what problem do you wanna solve in the[00:23:58] world? [00:23:59] Ricardo Belmar: That's the [00:23:59] Alan Smithson: know, technology can be used. It doesn't matter if you have a problem you wanna solve, like climate change, I want to solve, I wanna stop sharks from being harvested for their fins. Okay? If you take that, that singular cue, you can use all sorts of technologies to disrupt supply chains to, you know sink ships. You could do everything in your power to people from fishing for sharks, cutting their fins off and throwing them back. I mean, imagine just one person had a singular vision on that and used every piece of technology to disrupt that industry. Of course, you do [00:24:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It, it's like the, the number one thing, right, the technology brings is agility to do these things quickly. [00:24:37] Alan Smithson: we're not teaching people. that, one, they have all the technology at the fingertips as long as you have access to the internet and a phone or a computer. Two, you can make a big difference as an individual. And three, we're not teaching people to set goals and look at long term horizons. So when Julie and I got into Metaverse, this was actually not our long-term goal.[00:24:59] Our long-term goal is to build a new education system using this technology. But we're in year seven of a 30 year plan. mean, literally, you know, we started in 2014, we're now in, you know, 2022 and we're going out to, you know, 20, I think it was 2048 or something, was our kind of goal. So imagine looking 20 years out as a student instead of saying, What do you want to, what kinda job do you wanna get?[00:25:22] Well, I'll get a job and then six months later, my employer will lay me off and then I'll go through this thing. And once you get into the the rat race of having to pay rent, your opportunities to dream huge and solve world problems really diminishes. Because you just need to pay your bills. And I think this is one of the one of the things that we can do better as a society is, is give people a bit of a safety net so they can start to try to cha to take on big problems in the world.[00:25:47] But you have to tell them what the problems are and what are some of the solution opportunities, and then say, here dedicate your life to one, solving this problem.[00:25:55] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that that's a much better way of looking at it. And I think it's just gonna be inevitable. Like I will never ask that question again after I got that answer because I too realize that like, it's a wrong question.[00:26:09] Alan Smithson: You know, ask me, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I'm like, Well, I don't know. I, I have been in my life, I, I graduated with a degree in molecular biology. I was a pharmaceutical rep. I owned a medical billing company. We owned a hostile, We we had a nutraceutical company.[00:26:26] We had a DJ business. I was a DJ for 20 years. We had a technology company and now we own a game engine. So who knows where life will take you. But now we have a, a singular vision and, and mission to, to create a new education system for the world using the technologies that we're talking about today.[00:26:41] And we, we actually settled on retail as a model to focus on that because all the technologies we need for retail at the highest levels. So, you know, we're building a virtual mall, which is insane, but we're building the world's largest virtual mall, and all the technologies in there are actually being built in mindfulness of what we're gonna need for education.[00:27:02] So the hundredth floor of the mall, each floor of the mall is a million square feet, so it's a hundred floors tall. Each floor is a million square feet, so you have a hundred million square feet of virtual space to build retail. Experiences and entertainment and all these things. But the hundredth floor is actually owned by the Unlimited Awesome Academy, which is Julie and i's trust to build this new education platform.[00:27:23] So the hundredth floor of the mall will benefit from the entire mall. The 20th floor of the mall is an education floor, so we have, you know, floor one to 20 is owned by the mall and leased to brands. So we've got like a luxury floor, automotive floor, consumer electronics, all these things. Floor 20 is actually reserved for education.[00:27:39] So we're gonna put education systems in there and let them have the, the floor, There's no charge for that. So we really do have this kind of long term vision of how we can leverage the, the retail world for the technology. Cuz we're, we're working with our partners to build insane amounts of technology, like crazy stuff.[00:27:56] We can, We built a technology recently called Infinite, l o d, or infinite level of detail that allows us to have an infinite virtual world. Meaning the mall's one building, when you leave the mall, it's vast. I mean, you could build anything you want in as far as you see. And it could be out in space like we designed it so that it doesn't, it, it loads on any phone fast and you can load and go anywhere in the world and walk around and it's just vast, right?[00:28:22] So that technology, I think is gonna revolutionize how. Build these things, because now what it typically happens is you build a scene and the scene is a fixed map, like, you know, Decentraland, a fixed map, sandbox, it's a fixed map. And then what you do is as you walk around the map, it's kinda loading different parts of the map.[00:28:40] Well, we don't have a fixed map. We have the fixed mall, but then the map is completely open to the world and what they wanna build. And so this is kind of our way of saying, okay, what does an open and unlimited metaverse look like? You know? And because that's really what people want. They want a persistent. Is never ending. It's kinda like Second Life, but you know, at a much, much larger scale available. And then Second, Life is still successful. They still have probably a million people a year on Second. Life doesn't work on mobile, Decent land, doesn't work on mobile Sandbox doesn't work on mobile. Roblox barely works on mobile.[00:29:11] So you know, having the ability to onboard billions of mobile phones into the Metas is gonna be the key. And then of course, we'll move to glasses over the next decade as well. You're seeing Oculus moved over to Meta now. Meta is introducing a new a new headset. So we're gonna see vast improve improvements of this. And then I would, I'd venture to say Apple makes their entrance into this space probably in the next year, would be my guess. We've been waiting for years and there's been lots of rumors over the years. I remember somebody in 2014 saying, Apple's gonna come out with VR glasses this year.[00:29:43] And I was like, I don't know about. Now, here we are, seven years [00:29:47] later. It's still [00:29:48] Why are brands coming to the mall?[00:29:48] Ricardo Belmar: So, so Alan, let me ask you more about the mall. I'm curious, when you talk to retailers and brands about the floors in the mall that you've got set aside for them, what, what's, what's your pitch to them? What, what's the selling point for the retailers to, Is it, for example, because you'd run on mobile where so many of these other platforms either barely do or, or don't what, what's the big selling point for the retail on the brand to, to be in the.[00:30:10] Alan Smithson: sure. I think it's, it's being part of something bigger. First of all, you know, you look. Brands are jumping into De Central and because it's, it's there and it works and it's bigger, right? It's a bigger community and there's gonna be more chance of eyeballs falling on. The problem is there's just not a lot of users there because the graphic fidelity is ma and there's a lot of barriers to entry.[00:30:27] If you wanna buy something physical, you cannot, If you want to use your credit card to buy something digital, you cannot, You have to buy with Manna, which is their in world currency. So we took a lot of the ideas from what these other platforms were doing. We said, Okay, well, how. Specifically make that for retail.[00:30:46] And really it was less about what we thought. And we've just had a lot of meetings with a lot of brands in the hundreds. And so when we, when we show them the mall, when we walk around, when we show them stores, when they say, Oh, well can it do this? Can it connect to our backend order management system?[00:31:00] Yes, it can because we use JavaScript. Can it, can we connect our loyalty program? Yes, absolutely. We have a, a backend system. And so it's just a really, a combination of. Having this idea for 'em all because we were building virtual showrooms for all different brands, and they were saying, Oh, I want a video chat on this one.[00:31:18] And this one would say, I want to dress the avatars and I, I want something over here. And so all these different disparate virtual showrooms that we're building, we built one for MasterCard, we built one for, for Samsung. We built all these things and they were asking for the same thing in different ways.[00:31:30] So we said, What if we built in a persistent mall so that if,[00:31:33] if we build a new piece of tech for one, one person, one brand, it now everybody in the mall. So you have the central part. Now brands can start driving people into their stores. So the mall.io/brand, it drops you right into the brand store. You can walk around, you get the full brand experience, but you can walk out the door as well. [00:31:52] So we've been meeting with, with hundreds of brands, and the brands that have interest in the mall, they want to get into the metaverse. And now here, here's the thing is it's a big cluster. You know, everybody's like, Oh, talking about the metaverse, the buzzword of the year. You know, do I make NFTs, do I not?[00:32:06] NFTs are kind of got like a, you know, negative connotation now that they've lost half their value. So it. Do we build our own virtual store? Do we go into Decentraland? Do we build something over here? Do we go into Roblox? And you know, the question or the answer's probably you gotta try all of the things, right?[00:32:23] And so you know, what we recommend is, look, take a budget, you know, whatever it is, 50 grand, a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever your budget is, that's discretionary. You know, don't invest too much in this right now because nobody knows what's gonna work and whatnot. So we have like a 50 grand entrance package.[00:32:37] You get lease, you get, you know, kind of all the things included. We build everything out for you.[00:32:41] We have a full studio. And so the idea was how do we just get rid of all of the barriers to entry for a brand and then just get them into the mall. Because it's, it's all new for all of us, right? You know, people are saying, How are you gonna get any traffic in the mall?[00:32:53] Well, you know, of course we're the mall. We have to get traffic in there. But we're coordinating that effort with the brands. With the brands that we're working with, because really we don't have the brand gravitas of a, you know, of a, of a large shoe company or a, a large electronics manufacturer. You guys have, they have hundreds of thousands or millions of consumers. [00:33:12] And we're working with a candy company. They're gonna put QR codes on the candy, so that's gonna drive people directly into their store in the mall. And, they have multiple stores in the mall, so it's. It's really intriguing how, we've kind of realized that the marketing and getting people into the mall is, is less our responsibility is more of the brands, but where our responsibility is to have the right brands there and encourage them to build cool stuff because it's really less about, you, know, a store and it's more about an experience. And so, you know, one thing that I think the mall replaces or, or at least adjuncts is that, or not replaces, but adjuncts is that Amazon and Mall Walmart are the two largest retail stores on earth digitally, right? amazon.com and walmart.com. But you wouldn't invite your friends to go shopping on amazon.com.[00:33:58] You'd be like, Hey, we're gonna have a shopping date on, Go on Amazon. See what I'm ordering in my cart. It, it's taken the fun out shopping it, it's taken a front out. It's, it's just ruthless procurement of goods. Casey we'll go Amazon shopping[00:34:12] Buying vs Shopping - it should be fun![00:34:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. It's buying versus shopping. [00:34:14] Alan Smithson: it is. Procurement of goods versus shopping and shopping should be fun.[00:34:18] There is a reason why malls aim the cultural center of communities, and we wanna do the same thing. So our, our mall is multiplayer. You can invite your friends, you can go walk around. It's super fun actually. And we're putting little mini games in there. There's daily games that change every day so you can win prizes.[00:34:34] Just super cool stuff. So. [00:34:35] Casey Golden: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that big, that big benefit at the end of the day of participating. It may not necessarily be a conversion rate because that's not necessarily the goal Right. [00:34:48] now. What would you say is that roi? Because I don't feel that it's going to be money, like sales revenue, but I might be wrong.[00:34:59] Like today, if somebody wanted to go and have their first Metaverse experience with you, what is that main transformation or moment that you expect that that brand is going to be mentioning in the meeting to a hundred thousand or 800,000 next season? There?[00:35:19] Alan Smithson: I think you nailed it. Is, is really up to the brands to build some cool stuff and, and look, right now we made the mall look like, like a mall. It's got stores you can walk around. It doesn't need to look like a mall. It could be a, a field, it could be a space, it could be anything, right? So when you walk in your store, , Yes.[00:35:34] It looks like a store from the outside. And then when you walk in through the barrier of the door, it changes and, loads a new project. And the new project is like, Oh, now I'm in a, you know, basketball court, or now I'm like sitting court side watching you know, Nicks and nets, right? So it's one of those things that right now there's a term called skew amorphism, meaning we kind of tend to take what is already existing and build things like that.[00:35:56] So we. A mall. Looks like a mall. We put it into digital format so it feels and looks like a mall. Like you're walking around. You don't, it just feels right. It just looks like a mall or, Okay, great. I get it. I understand it this, really understand it. But that doesn't mean we can't push the absolute limits on the other end.[00:36:09] But what we need to do, and we need to do this for everybody, is make people feel comfortable in these virtual spaces and, and skew amorphism or, or bringing kind of the traditional world into the virtual world for now seems to. The right path. We've done some crazy, crazy stuff on the, on the, you know, way out there, NFT galleries and stuff. [00:36:30] And it doesn't really resonate with people. They don't know how to navigate it. They, they don't understand it. They're, there's a bit of a mix mix mash, so I think it's really gonna be up to the brands to build cool experiences that engage with their customers that. Really drive brand awareness. You look at Samsung's 8 37 store in New York. I think it's a prime example. And even Nike Store in New York City, I mean, yes, they sell shoes, but it's really about the experience of experiencing the brand. You go into Nike store and the whole first floor is the history of Nike. You can look at the old shoes, like it's just really, really cool. Yes, you can buy some shoes on, you know, one of the other floors, but it's not about that. It's about the experience of, oh my God, I was in New York and I went to this crazy store. And it, it, made me realize how how much research has gone into the Nike shoes and then like, you can really build these experiences and Samsung 8 3 7 in New York as well.[00:37:16] You go in there, you can't buy anything. You can literally just, you can look at the fridges, you can look at the kitchens, you can look at the, the mobile phones. You can, there's all these really cool experiences. There's lots of places to take selfies, which is fun. And you, you know, people's new selfie flex is gonna be, Hey, I gonna dress up my avatar.[00:37:33] And dripping in Gucci and and take a picture. But I think people's online personas are going to start being more important than their in-person personas. We're already seeing that. I mean, like, you know, people in virtual worlds are spending billion, billions on skins. [00:37:49] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Oh [00:37:51] Alan Smithson: You know, night skins.[00:37:53] I mean, I think Fortnite did something like $9 billion last year, Something [00:37:57] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. [00:37:57] It's crazy. Yeah. So, Alan, let me ask you this. What, what would be your top advice right now for, for, let's say for this over this next year for retailers, DTC brands, I mean even retail tech businesses who are all looking at the metaverse and kind of thinking, Okay, how do I get in? What, what, what are my first steps?[00:38:17] What do I do to get started?[00:38:19] Alan Smithson: Sure. Find a, a decent partner who understands retail, who's done with this. There's, you know There's a company called Max, a Maxent. They do a great work on kind of, you know, for furniture companies, a bunch of retailers. [00:38:30][00:38:30] Alan Smithson: Marxent [00:38:31][00:38:31] Yeah, they, they do a great job. Converting things to 3d, you're gonna have to have teams that understand 3d.[00:38:36] And 3D is not easy. It's not as easy as creating a JPEG or a video. It's quite complicated. There's. You have a 3D model, then you've got layers and layers of of images that go on top of that to make it look realistic. You've got a bumpy one that makes it look bumpy. You've got texture files, all these things.[00:38:51] It's not, it's not really that easy a technology. Now, it's getting easier and we're getting there, but I think by starting now and starting small, taking a, you know, let's say 50,000 to a $500,000 budget, building something and then starting to have your teams internally. Understand how the sausage is made. How do we go from an idea or a concept or some photographs of a store to a fully, 3D environment with avatars, with products in there and everything, and, click to buy everything.[00:39:19] And so one of the reasons we did the mall is because we've done this a bunch of times for individual clients and it, it ended up becoming kind of rinse and repeat, right? We're like, Okay, well this, this client wants, and now we can build a virtual showroom in. Oh man, the last one we built, we took three days and it was beautiful. Just because we're getting really good at that. So I think the first thing is understand, learn a bit. So there's lots and lots of . I don't know how many guides to the metaverse there are, but there's probably at least a hundred that I know of. So go read some of those. You know, have somebody in your team dedicate somebody in your team to be the head of Metaverse, you know, and it's not just about, you know, 3D and that sort of thing, but you have to understand the crypto world as well.[00:39:58] People are gonna start buying in cryptocurrencies. What does that mean for you? How. How do you get paid in cryptocurrency and convert that to fiat because brands don't have accounting systems that that can take into account crypto. Right. So we have a, a partner named BitPay. So anybody can pay in any crypto they want using 95 different wallets.[00:40:16] It automatically takes their money, converts to U s D on at the end of the day and then settles with the brand at the end of the day. So you, the brands get settled in USD. . And, and the client doesn't know any, any difference in between and it's actually cheaper. So a stripe is like 3% for, you know, paying with credit cards or whatever.[00:40:34] With fiat and BitPay is only 1% because, and there's no chargebacks. Cuz once a crypto payment's paid, it's, there's, you can't reverse it. So I think there's gonna be a, a combination of. Onboarding customers or guests, we call them guests in the mall. Onboarding guests into, the crypto world slowly, but allowing them to pay in anything they want.[00:40:52] You pay credit card, PayPal, Amazon Pay, you know, it doesn't matter. We will, we will take any form of payment for physical and or digital goods in fiat and or cryptocurrency. And so from a brand standpoint, something like the mall kind of gives you. A boost because you don't have to reinvent the wheel.[00:41:10] If you're going into Decentraland again, there's a platform already there, there's people there. Roblox is great if, let's say, for example, you're a brand and your, your target customer is 25 to 30, well, your next target customer is, you know, 15 to 25. Right? Like that block. So if they're playing Roblox, and then I think something like 62% of Roblox players are under the age of 16. So if that's your next target demographic, like Gucci wants to be in the next, you know, they wanna be generationally relevant. [00:41:39] So if you're a brand that wants to be generationally relevant and be put in front of millions of people, go Roblox, you know that, that's a great starting point there. But it's, it's hard to get people's attention in there too. You've got, something like 10 million games on Roblox or something, or 4 million games on Roblox. So and then with the mall, it is a dedicated retail experience. You know, people are going there for that. They know what they're getting, and there's, there's gonna be a lot of, malls, digital malls, metaverse malls and these sorts of things.[00:42:06] But I don't think a lot of the startups that get into this realize the true depth of what's required. I mean, we spent seven years building a game engine for Enterprise. So when a, when a client says, What are your security protocols? We, we have a SOC two compliance and SOC two is not an easy thing to do.[00:42:23] It's, you know, it's eight months of, they basically take everybody on your team rip apart of their computers and you know, digitally [00:42:31] inside, make sure you don't have anything hidden. You gotta go through all these security protocols. So now that when we go to our clients, we say we are of SOC two, we also have Kronos compliance.[00:42:40] So Kronos is a 3D standard so that if you have a 3D model that you use on walmart.com, you can just pick it up and drop it into the mall and it will look the. This is important. Your product is not gonna look real in Roblox. It's gonna look like it's made out of Lego. You go, same thing with Sandbox, same with the Decentraland.[00:42:58] And they use a technology called voxels. So it's, very gamey looking like, like it's made out [00:43:02] Ricardo Belmar: Very [00:43:03] blocky. It's very [00:43:04] Casey Golden: of a standard of visual aesthetic that a lot, the higher end the brand, the less familiar that feels. And it's, but it's being adopted and it's, You don't have to be photorealistic all the time, [00:43:21] Alan Smithson: Yeah. You can have fun with it. And that's what I tell brands. Look,[00:43:24] You can use Unreal Engine for your commercials, your, your Hollywood movies. You know, they, they high, super high end. Maybe you want to build a film, a car, you know, driving through things. You can use the Unreal Engine for that. Then you can take the same asset. Down res it put it into Metaverse Engine. And now you can use it on the web, on, on the mall, right? You can use that same thing now it's interactive. You can drive it, you can, you know, on a mobile phone. Then you can take that same thing, pixelize it, and throw it into, into Decentraland or sandbox or, or Roblox or Minecraft.[00:43:51] And the idea is that you're using one asset to create several experiences and brands are gonna start doing this. I mean, it's just very few brands are doing it. [00:44:00] But I predict that you're not gonna be in one metaverse. You're gonna be in a bunch of different things, try different things, and some will be successful, Some won't.[00:44:06] Try things on your own website as well. I mean, our system. When you b build a store in the mall, you can actually build a hit, copy, paste, make a separate one and put it on your website as well. Now it'll link over to the mall, but it can reside on your know your brand.com website. We, we've taken out as many barriers to entry for brands as possible from, from our standpoint. [00:44:26] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:44:27] Alan Smithson: We just, we've done so many meetings and it's been, I mean, our FAQ page is 50 questions long now for the mall [00:44:33] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's hard enough to wrap your brain around it. At least once you make the decision. Let me take you right to it. [00:44:44] Alan Smithson: Let's just get it done, shall we? [00:44:46] And shouldn't be like one year thing. Oh my God, we're gonna build this thing in a year. Like what? No, man. If you can't build it in a, you know, eight weeks. [00:44:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. you'll be too late. [00:44:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah. maybe. Maybe. [00:44:58] Ricardo Belmar: You might be too late. [00:44:59] Alan Smithson: It's a crazy world we live in. It's moving so fast. That's why, one of our benefits of the engine is that it's low code.[00:45:04] We can build these things in in hours, you know like building the whole thing from scratch takes three days. You imagine how long that used to take? Six months ago, that took three weeks.[00:45:14] Ricardo Belmar: There's definitely a magic to to low code for sure, to really speed things up.[00:45:18] Alan Smithson: Yep. [00:45:19] How to reach Alan?[00:45:19] Casey Golden: what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you and follow the journey? [00:45:23] Alan Smithson: Sure. I, I, there's a couple ways. Metaverse Engine, which is, you know, the creation platform that is powering the, the mall. You can go to metaverse.com, m a t a v r s e.com. The mall is simply the mall.io. You can go sign up there, and if you sign up now for the mall, whether you're a brand or a guest, or an investor it'll ask you, you know, a dropdown for that.[00:45:43] You'll get put into a, an email funnel. So you'll have, if you sign up now, you'll have all early access to everything. So, for example, we're launching a new website for the mall, And that new website is fully built as a 3D world. So you scroll down the mall and you actually walk in and you end up inside of 3D website walking around.[00:46:00] It's not the mall, it's the website for the mall. we used our engine to build a revolutionary new website. So go to mall.io, the mall.io. And then you can just add me on LinkedIn. I can't add anybody from that, but you can follow me on LinkedIn. Cause I hit the limit of LinkedIn. Just use this my name alan Smithson. And you'll see fireworks above my head. I, I took a picture at the Formula one and that's my profile pick now [00:46:22] Casey Golden: Oh, [00:46:22] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, nice. [00:46:23] Alan Smithson: was like, this [00:46:24] Ricardo Belmar: cool [00:46:24] Alan Smithson: awesome. [00:46:25] Ricardo Belmar: Very cool . [00:46:26] Alan Smithson: Yep. [00:46:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I, I know I have really learned a lot today, Alan. Thank, thank you for that. I'm sure all of our listeners and, and viewers did too. Casey cause, you're already a, a Metaverse and, and web three advocate, so I'm sure a lot of this was old news for you after your debut event. Right. [00:46:40] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, we just had our second successful brand activation with Lux Lock on the 12th for New York Fashion Week. So with five brands everyone is enjoying. The experiences and looking forward to the future of commerce, like the brands are excited, the con consumers are excited. Making these early experiences is just critical into understanding like what these channels could potentially mean to your company.[00:47:06] Just do something And see what happens. [00:47:11] Alan Smithson: Yep. No, it's absolutely true. And look, one other thing that I, I didn't really mention is set some KPIs. What, what is it you want to get out of it? Because a lot of times, you know, for the last five years or six years, we've been building all sorts of marketing things, and they never really set KPIs.[00:47:25] They're just like, Hey, let's do this cool thing over there. And you're like, Yeah, I'll take your money and we'll do it. No, there's no measurement of success. So then you don't get a subsequent budget. And, and marketing teams are, they, they sometimes do this a lot, you know, they'll, they'll do things without measuring it, and that's fine.[00:47:41] Then maybe they want the media hits or whatever it is. But you have to have some metrics of success. Is it conversions? Is it time spent on platform? Is it, is it the number of visitors? What I, is the metric that you're measuring for success?[00:47:52] Because then, you can measure that. We can make changes. You can change completely everything or just some things, and you can get to the successful metrics. If you're not measuring it there's no point. So that's why actually one of the things in our mall is, complete analytics dashboard with, with everything from time spent on how much time somebody spent on a product. I mean, looking at it did they invite a friend? Did they convert from there? You know, these things are all really important.[00:48:15] And so we built, built this cool dashboard so that you can kinda look at your store and, and see a heat map of where people walked. Cause if somebody walks in your store and they all go right, and you want them to go left, well you can put a little display. [00:48:27] Casey Golden: they always, always go right. [00:48:29] Alan Smithson: Do they[00:48:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. [00:48:33] Casey Golden: apartment? Buildings. We'll go right[00:48:38] Alan Smithson: love it? Well, you know what? The heat map data will tell us where people go. [00:48:42] We'll find it. Yeah. Once we have this segregated data in the mall, we'll be able to tell, you know, okay. 57% of people went that way. 37 went that way. [00:48:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then you can keep adjusting, right? I mean, that's kinda the whole point is you want to keep adjusting and adapting to what, What's gonna work? [00:48:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah, you could put a plant there to make them sure. They go around it the other way. You just literally, and this is the other thing, you can re-merchandise your store for every day if you wanted to, you could be like, Hey, today we're gonna do, you know I don't know. It's October, so we're gonna do a Halloween theme, and for the month of October, it's Halloween theme.[00:49:10] And then, you know,

This week the hosts are reporting live from AWE 2022. In this special episode of TWIXR, Charlie and Ted will be interviewing the following: Alan Smithson, CEO, MetaVrse, Pearly Chen, VP, HTC, Devon Copley, CEO Avatour.Thank you to our sponsor, Virbela!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Website Link: MetaVRse.comCompany/Podcast Name: MetaVRseAlan Smithson, B.Sc. - Co-Founder - MetaVRse, Inc. Alan Smithson's purpose in life is to inspire and educate people to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way. Mr. Smithson is a Co-Founder of MetaVRse, a low-code platform that makes it easy to create & share interactive 3D experiences instantly on the web. He is a proud Father, Business Leader, TEDx Speaker, and Podcast Host. Mr. Smithson co-invented the World's first touchscreen DJ system, Emulator — featured on Dragons' Den and winning DJ Mag's Innovative Product of the Year in 2011. His 10-year-old daughter invented sandals that leave a heart-shaped tan line on your feet called Love Sandal winning Top 20 Under 20 at only 10 years old. He is an Independent Global Advisor on the Business of XR for Fortune 500 Companies and UHNW Family Offices.

The idea of the metaverse has captured the attention of brands, retailers, media companies, marketing agencies, and technology platforms. Pioneering business leaders, Investors, and entrepreneurs see new opportunities to stake their claim in an as yet-to-be-defined space that promises to revolutionize the internet and what it means to be online and completely change the way people work, play, and shop. During this 1 hour recording of a webinar, PSFK iQ researchers will help frame how our audience understands and thinks about the metaverse by unpacking consumer sentiment to identify key insights and looking at the experimentation taking place to highlight emerging trends in retail and marketing, as well as the tools and services underpinning the virtual economy. They'll also talk to experts to get their POV on the meaningful opportunities and innovations in the metaverse space. This session will includes: - Presentation of key insights from new PSFK Research - Expert discussion with Liz Bacelar of Estée Lauder Companies and Alan Smithson of MetaVRse *Liz Bacelar of Estée Lauder Companies* Our expert brand-side speaker on the webinar is Liz Bacelar. Liz is the Global Executive Director of Innovation for Estée Lauder Companies, powering NFT, Metaverse and emerging tech opportunities for their 30+ brands in the US, China, Europe and LatAm. Prior to her career in beauty, Liz was credited with powering the evolution of “fashion and tech”, connecting technologists and executives through her consultancy and global industry events. *Alan Smithson of MetaVRse* Also joining the conversation will be Alan Smithson from MetaVRse, a universal, web-based 3D creation platform that enables anyone to leverage the power of spatial computing. With MetaVRse's proprietary, code-optional web platform, retailers and companies can easily create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly. By harnessing the power of billions of devices from a one-click publish, MetaVRse is helping build an open, universal and democratized Metaverse. https://metavrse.com/ For more information about this event: https://retailinnovationweek.com/event/psfk-metaverse-webinar/ For more information about the associated research driving this event: https://www.psfk.com/report/brand-strategies-for-the-metaverse https://www.psfk.com/report/retail-strategies-for-the-metaverse https://www.psfk.com/membership --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/psfk/message

Alan Smithson, CoFounder of MetaVRse  joined me for a discussion about the evolution of the Metaverse. He's been involved with building Metaverse technologies since the companies founding in 2016. MetaVRse is a Cloud Platform that makes it easy to Create, Curate & Consume interactive 3D Experiences across every device through a drag and drop, code optional editor Their short to mid term focus is on marketing, retail and ecommerce solutions. He's got a podcast “XR for Business” that's worth checking out. Give it a listen and let us know what you think?   Podcast Guest Alan Smithson CoFounder of MetaVRse  https://metavrse.com   Podcast Hosts Jeff Roster Twitter https://twitter.com/JeffPR LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/ Website https://thisweekininnovation.com Brian Sathianathan Twitter  https://twitter.com/BrianVision Website https://www.iterate.ai Podcast Website https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-f8asf-af2782 https://thisweekininnovation.com Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-innovation/id1562068014 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2QDqTUnt6jebdRHbRzSTJN LaunchPadOne https://www.launchpaddm.com/pd/This-Week-in-Innovation?showAllEpisodes=true Listen Notes https://lnns.co/2QPSfnizE5K     #Startup #Retailers #innovation #Analysts, #professors, #reporters, #economists #Founders, #VC's #blockchain #IoT #retail #blockchain #IoT #retail innovation #retail startups #startup strategies #retail apocalypse #retail #future of retail #this week in innovation #retail trends #clubhouse #unified commerce #social commerce #mobile commerce #e commerce #supply chain #data #loss prevention #returns management #computer vision #wms #warehouse management systems #data science #machine learning #Inventory 

The world received a gift three years ago, in the form of AR technology from the likes of Google and Apple - ARKit and ARCore. But most businesses had no one on-staff at-hand to take advantage of this gift without some extensive upskilling to do. John Martin shares how BundlAR makes AR easy for everyone, and what is needed for wider adoption. Alan: Hey, everyone, I'm Alan Smithson, and today we're speaking with John Martin, the CEO and co-founder of BUNDLR, an augmented reality platform company empowering training, learning, and development innovators with on-demand and mobile immersive experiences. John and I met at the VR/AR Association Chicago meetup, and would become amazing friends as we built the future of communications together. In this interview, we will discuss one of the largest barriers to the widespread adoption of AR and what organizations need to do in order to deploy AR experiences instantly and on a global scale. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. John, it has been a pleasure to get to know you over these years, and I'm super excited to have you on the show. Welcome to the show. John: Thank you, Alan. And I'm looking forward to a great conversation with you, as always. Alan: It's been a couple of years since we got to know each other. I stayed at your house in Chicago. That was very lovely of you, I got to meet your family. And I've watched your platform go from kind of the infancy stages to being a global phenomenon, now. Let's-- I want you to have the stage to really tell people what BUNDLAR is all about and what you guys are doing. John: Well, BUNDLAR, we had a pretty clear mission about a year and a half ago. We were very fortunate to be working with some of the world's great innovators on what I'd call augmented reality projects. It could have been a prospective student tour at Arizona State University. Google gave a grant to the DuSable Museum in Chicago, so they wanted to reboot the Mayor Harold Washington exhibit. Proctor & Gamble had projects at upcoming conventions and shows. Remember when we used to have those? And from all of these engagements-- Alan: In real shows, like IRL, in real life? Like in--? John: Yeah, like in person, back in the good old days. Oh, do I miss that! But at any rate, what we realized was when Google and Apple gave this gift of AR to the world just three summers ago, saying they were all-in with AR, meaning that the hardware was going to work, it was like, wow. Most corporate IT or marketing teams really didn't have anybody on board their staffs that could take advantage of this amazing capability of the mobile device. So at any rate, for us, there's was like, well, what if we could take all of these engagements that we had created, and put them into a repeatable self-serve augmented reality content management system and platform? So it was a very big idea, but we thought one that was worth the journey. So we started to build out a team of 12 really focused AR professionals on the development side to build out this platform. Alan: Well, I know your CTO, Matt [Wren]. I mean, his whole experience in life was creating content management systems for massive corporations, so-- John: Exactly. So it started with Matt and Gareth [Davies], who's on the product side, but really knows AR. We were so blessed to find literally the man that wrote the book on Unity [chuckles] Joe Hocking, to join the team. And Lewis Gardner on our CMS. So we were very fortunate to have a great team come together. And we shared a vision, which is, let's build out an augmented reality platform that would make it super easy and affordable for businesses and organizations to weave in augmented reality c

Plumbing a problem for developers in Germany, where old pipe systems can make renovating any structure a challenge. Holo-Light's Florian Haspinger wants to help with problems like this using XR technologies, to enable an XR economy. Alan: Good morning, everyone, it's Alan Smithson here, the host of the XR for Business podcast. And today we have a very special guest, Florian Haspinger, CEO and one of the founders of Holo-Light. And today we're going to be learning how Holo-Light is redefining engineering across automotive, manufacturing, chemical, and myriad other industries using XR technologies. So with that, thank you and welcome to the XR for Business podcast. Florian, how are you, my friend? Florian: Hi, Alan. Thanks, I'm fine. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you very much for having me. Alan: It's so great to have you on the show. And I'm really excited. But for people who don't know, why don't you just kind of tell us a little bit about what is Holo-Light and how did you get into it? Florian: Sure, of course. Let me take a bit of time and I will tell you how things started. We have a few stories back in the beginning of everything. This would explain a little bit better how the story would end up. So good stories should start with something like "Once upon a time, there was a big economy and The Problem," and so on. Or "It was a cold, dark winter night in the mountains back in 2015, snow was falling down and you saw the light of the lantern outside flickering inside an old house." But honestly, that's not how it started. Alan: [laughs] I was all-- you had me on the edge of my seat! "Once upon a time, it's snowing." I could picture it! Florian: [laughs] Alan: [laughs] Alright, so carry on. Florian: We were really frustrated students. We studied theoretical physics in Tyrol. And as a theoretical study -- especially on physics -- also, the study is extremely theoretical. And also the funder. And we sat together in my old child's room. So it was a 2015, around in the beginning. And we were overthinking our life decisions. And just to notice, we were just 24 years old and we thought about how we can invest our lifetime in something, something makes a difference in the world outside. There we thought about how can we make things easier or better in matters of industry and engineering, because also our background was a little bit in engineering. And later and after some silence and after a few questions, Alex [Werlberger] -- our CTO -- came up with the idea to think about augmented and virtual reality. And then we started to talk about how this kind of technology would be able to drive digitization, revolutionize industries, and change the way we consume content in the future. Alan: What was that, to put a timeframe on this? Florian: It was in January-February 2015. To be honest, it was really a little bit snowy out there. Alan: So here you are in the beautiful mountains of Tyrol, probably doing some skiing. Snow's glistening, your CTO says "Aha! I think it's going to be XR!" Then what? Florian: [chuckles] Exactly. And after this, this brilliant thought about AR and VR we just said, "Okay, yes, let's do it." And we founded a company in April 2015. And after founding the company we sat together and said, "Okay, now we have a company. But what about the business idea and the business model?" So first we had the idea to drive digitization with XR, then we founded the company, and then afterwards we had to build up the business model. So it was a little bit funny in the beginning. But in-- I remember it was later 2015 when we were able to get t

Last year, Deloitte's technology allowed golf fans to browse three historic holes right in their homes with XR technology; this year, they recreated the entire 18 holes of the U.S. Open. Alan chats with Allan Cook & Kaitlyn Kuczer who drive home how immersive tech is the next technological leap forward. Alan: Welcome back to the XR for Business podcast, it's Alan Smithson, your host today. And today we have two very special guests: Kaitlyn Kuczer and Allan Cook from Deloitte's Digital Reality practice. They're working with clients to develop and implement their strategies, pilots, and technology solutions in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, 360, spatial, and immersive; all known as XR. We're going to dive into an incredible project, the US Golf Association using augmented reality to bring a live golf tournament to your living room in full 3D. In addition, we're going to be discussing the multimillion dollar XR practice at Deloitte and how they're serving the needs of customers around the world. All that and more coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Allan and Kaitlyn, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Allan: Good morning. Alan: Good morning. Where are you guys calling in from now? Kaitlyn: We are coming in from Denver, Colorado. Alan: Amazing. And so let me ask you a quick question. How did you both get into XR, and what was the spark that you saw? And then we'll talk about the Deloitte practice and how that's evolved over the last little bit. And then I want to really dive into this amazing experience you guys made at the USGA. So perhaps, Kaitlyn and Allan, tell us how you kind of got into this, and what was the specific factor to get into XR within Deloitte? Allan: So I'll jump in here. Kaitlyn and I have been working in what we call digital reality -- it's all things: AR, VR, spatial, immersive, and nowadays 3D -- for about four years. Originally, Deloitte was looking at that next generation of exponential technologies, to look at where we think our next generation of consulting revenues, consulting technologies are going to be coming from. Within that, we'd started off a kind of a deep dive analysis of the marketplace and quickly realized that there was really a huge potential for not only ourselves, but for many technology firms, many consulting firms. Since then, we've grown to between 70 and 100 dedicated staff now within the US. We are working with a huge variety of clients. Our main focus tends to be in four broad areas. Firstly doing a lot of strategy work with clients, so helping them to figure out where to play, how to win, where they should be experimenting in this area, but also where they should be implementing projects and helping them to realize significant returns. We're doing a lot of work in immersive learning. I like to say, if it's too dangerous, too difficult, or too expensive to do the training in the real world, why wouldn't you do it in a virtual world? The next big area we're focusing on is really that frontline work, field service engineers, see-what-I-see, do-what-I-do, digital twins. And then finally what we call digital reality experiences. So this is a lot more consumer facing, whether that's retail type events or -- like you mentioned in the intro -- the work that we did with the US Golf Association on the US Open over the last few years. Alan: So there's a pretty wide swath or pretty wide spectrum here. You've got consumer facing application -- bringing the USGA into your living room -- but then you've also got companies that are manufacturing products that want to see maybe a digital twin of a factory, or even support systems where you can point your phone at a manufacturing machine and h

Talon Simulations was making great strides in the location-based entertainment industry, until COVID-19 hit. Now they're pivoting the technology to suit more training-based use cases, and CEO Brandon Naids is on the show to explain how. Alan: Hey, everyone, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is Brandon Naids. He's the CEO and co-founder of Talon Simulations. They are a provider of virtual reality experiences, but not just any virtual reality experiences. They have full motion simulators for entertainment and training. We're going to dig into how these amazing simulators can push forward the reality behind virtual reality. So, Brandon, welcome to the show and thanks for joining me. Brandon: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Alan. Definitely look forward to our discussion. Alan: I'm really excited. You get to play with probably the coolest toys in the VR space. You have motion simulators for racing games, and it's not all fun and games, but man, you must have a pretty cool office. Brandon: Yeah, we definitely have a lot of fun here, and we used to take the simulators home for weekend testing, but kind of got to the point where we play with it enough at the office. [chuckles] Alan: [chuckles] Do you have Thursday night is race night, and everybody shows up and they make bets on each other? Brandon: Yeah, usually Friday afternoons, it's a good time to decompress and have some competition. So it was a lot of fun. Alan: And you guys are right in the heart of simulation country in Orlando, right? Brandon: Yeah, we are. And that's definitely been one of the main factors that we attribute to the success we have, it's just being in the heart of the amusement industry, as well as simulation and training. It's a big hub. And gaming technologies, so couldn't have picked a better spot. Alan: It's true and I love the fact that you're kind of right in the middle of entertainment or training, so that your teams can enjoy the gaming aspect and the fun, but then also the serious aspect and really bring this technology to businesses in ways that can improve their training and improve their safety, as well. So with that, this is the XR for Business podcast. But I wanted you to just maybe introduce Talon Simulations and kind of give us the elevator pitch, if you would. Brandon: Yeah. So Talon Simulations specializes in dynamic and immersive experiences for entertainment centers and training institutes. We'll create cockpit based experiences that we're able to adapt for specific projects, or we'll develop our own specifically for the arcade industries. We've put together a comprehensive turnkey, fully automated virtual reality arcade cabinet that we put together all the hardware and the software. And now we launched last year. And you're able to just purchase it, plug it into the wall and run it, whether with a credit card or arcade card reader, or put in free play, whatever the business model is. And for our training products, they are a little bit more customized for each project. Or we sell just the simulators to different integrators, and they're able to take our SDK and create their own experiences within Unreal or Unity. Alan: Amazing. Brandon: And those are really the exciting ones, because we'll work with universities, or digital marketing companies, or military contractors, and all sorts of different scenarios have been developed with our motion simulators. So we've seen a wide spectrum of use cases. Alan: All right. So on that, I'm looking at your website now and there's people racing a

The ability to bring the sense of touch into the virtual is the final frontier of true immersion, and some of that technology already exists. Haptics, however, can be prohibitively expensive, even for some enterprise. Gijs den Butter visits the podcast to explain how SenseGlove can bring that power to business for a fraction of the cost. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special guest, Gijs Den Butter. He is the CEO of SenseGlove. Now, if you're not familiar with haptics, we're going to get right into this. It's going to be awesome. But before we get to that, I just want to say, Gijs, it's really a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome to the show, my friend. Gijs: Thank you so much. Real pleasure to be here. Alan: It's really, really cool what you guys have built. A little while ago, I had the opportunity to try haptic gloves, and I put them on and I was able to reach out in virtual reality and grab an object and feel that object in my hand. And I can tell you, it was one of the most incredible ways to connect the physical world with the digital world. It was an amazing experience. And I'm really, really excited to have Gijs explain us and walk us through SenseGlove and what they're doing. Not only have you built haptic glove, but you've built a haptic glove that has force feedback. And so when you reach out and grab something, it stops in the shape of whatever you're reaching. Like, just explain how you got into the where you are right now. Where did this come from? Gijs: Yeah, I think this force feedback component is indeed the crucial part of feeling in VR, because you can have haptic feedback -- like vibro-motors and those kind of things -- but really the moment when you're grasping an object and you feel that there is something that isn't actually there, that is a key moment in what touch enables you in VR. And then you can really interact in VR, as you would do in a normal situation. So, yeah, with this belief, we started off in 2015 from a robotics group at the University of Delft -- Technical University of Delft -- here in the Netherlands. And we tried to get-- to make a wearable that is, well, doing exactly this -- so touch in VR -- but was also affordable for every professional use case. We started firstly with a use case of rehabilitation, but we then found that this rehabilitation-only use case was a too limited scenario. And that was mainly because we were on a larger business fair called the Hannover Messe. And one of our current clients, Volkswagen, came to us and said, "Well, this training of impaired people, could you also do that with healthy people, so that they also can experience feeling in VR?" And that was kind of the start. We pivoted from a research group that was searching for a quest where their technology could be used in VR, to a company called SenseGlove. And that's where we're today. So in 2018, we launched our first product. That is really a development kit where researchers or R&D organizations -- like within Volkswagen -- can test, "OK, what does this component of touch add to my virtual experiences?" Alan: How is Volkswagen using it? I mean, that's a really, really amazing company. Volkswagen Group owns pretty much everything: Porsche, Audi, and BMW, and so on. Gijs: As maybe the followers of this podcast know that Volkswagen is quite a progressive company if it goes down to VR. So what their two use cases that they're interested in, which one of them is the training of assembly personnel inside of your environment. You can imagine if you are about to become an assembly worker in Volkswagen, you need to assemble those cars. The first day on that line is a pretty challenging day. Alan:

If you sell a couch that comes in 1,000 different patters and colours, what's cheaper: printing out a swatch for each variation, or creating a configurator that lets you do that digitally and photo-realistically? The obvious answer is the ethos behind ThreeKit's product customization software, which CTO Ben Houston joins Alan to discuss. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special guest, Ben Houston. He's the founder and CTO of Threekit. Threekit's a platform used by some of the world's top brands like Crate & Barrel and Steelcase. And what they're able to do is create amazing visual customer experiences through virtual photography, augmented reality, 3D imagery, saving companies enormous amounts of time and money, having to get these photographs, set up studios. And at a time of COVID, we just can't do that anyway. So I'm really excited to invite Ben to the podcast today. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Ben: Hey, thank you, Alan, for such a great intro. Alan: Oh, it's my pleasure, man. You guys have really been working hard in the space. You've been in the space since, what, 2005, I believe? Ben: In the 3D space for quite some time, but in doing 3D for e-commerce, we've been doing that since 2015. Alan: Wow. So five years of experience. Let's kind of go back to 2015. What did you start doing and what are you doing now? What are the services that Threekit offers, and how has that changed from 2015? Ben: When we first got into it, we were actually-- our background's Hollywood visual effects. We started making-- this company originally was creating software for Hollywood films, and we did that quite successfully on a lot of films. And then what we did is we started moving that 3D content creation to the web. Once we had done that, we did that around 2013. In 2015, people started using our 3D content creation for the web, for e-commerce applications. Specifically, they were doing it for configurable products. So interactive 3D product configurators. This is-- Steelcase is a good example of an early adopter of this technology. We started doing that, and that had a lot of success, especially for companies that have massive configuration problems, such as Steelcase's office furniture. As we evolved down that path, the next thing we started doing was virtual photography or also called synthetic photography. That's where you will create a number of renderings of products for companies. A good example of that is Crate & Barrel. We've created hundreds and hundreds of thousands of renders for them, of their furniture, and it all looks real. And so now they don't have to build every piece of furniture and every fabric and then take a picture of it. We can just render those off. Alan: Gotta be some massive cost savings. We'll get into the numbers later. But wow, that's like-- if you don't have to take photographs, I mean, I can only imagine a photo shoot's expensive to begin with. Ben: And every one of their sofas is a couple of thousand dollars. So it's just simply not possible. And then what we've done more recently is the rise of AR. That has really been embraced by furniture realtors specifically, and so that allows them to see the furniture, how it would fit in their room or office. And so those are the three main offerings that our platform has. To recap, you have configurators, so companies that have -- maybe it's a chair -- and it comes in 50 different colors, and five different lumbar supports, and people can configure their office furniture, or chair, or any product, really. The second is -- which is a term I've never heard -- synthetic photography, basically being able to cr

Avid listeners will have noticed a few weeks without a podcast - that's because Alan's been hard at work behind-the-scenes building capital for several MetaVRse projects, including the MetaVRse Engine. This gave Alan a chance to reflect on the investment landscape of 2020, and is joined by VP of Marketing Alex Colgan to discuss the new normal that COVID has ushered into the VC world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special episode. We're going to be talking about the investment landscape of virtual and augmented reality as it pertains to investment in startups, companies going public. What is the investment landscape look like between now and the next few years? How are things going to be funded and what can we expect from the markets in terms of returns? And what can investors really count on to drive those returns as high as possible? Today, I'm joined by the MetaVRse VP of Marketing, our wonderful Alex Colgan. He's going to be joining me today and he's going to be interviewing *me* today. Alex: Hey. Alan: Hey, what's up, Alex? Fun fact about Alex: he also lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Or near Halifax. He's in the eastern part of Canada. So, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today. Alex: Canadian born and bred. Glad to be taking over the reins today. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, let's flip it around. Alan: It's really interesting, Alex, before we get started I have to really just punctuate a couple of things. Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of capital invested into virtual and augmented reality startups, in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. And it almost feels like we are going through this kind of winter, where investments have dried up in the area. So I'm really excited to talk about that, because I believe that as much as we're going into physical winter in Canada, I believe that we're going into a beautiful spring with regards to the investment landscape of this technology. So I'm really excited to dig into it today. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Bad economies are often some of the best times to invest, and there are also some of the best times to build a startup. COVID has had everybody scrambling over the past six months, and trying to identify the best path forward for the future. As a result of that, we've seen a lot of different sectors have been getting shaken up as a result. What are some of the biggest disruptions that we've seen over the past six months in some of these areas? Alan: Well, I think the major one is that with regards to investment, everybody just closed their wallets. COVID came and people went, "OK, there's so much uncertainty, just stop everything." And so pretty much all investment across all sectors dried up in March, and basically hasn't really come back until you were starting to see funding rounds happen now in September. And I believe this will continue October-November. Now we find ourselves in a time where there's actually a lot of fresh capital sitting on the sidelines that needs to be deployed. And if it's not deployed, it's losing money. So you have a ton of new startups on the market as well. We have a platform called xrcollaboration.com, and there's been over 70 startups that have created XR collaboration tools that allow you to go in VR, go into AR glasses, and communicate with people around the world. And not only if you have the VR and AR glasses, but there's new opportunities around using 2D screens like computers to navigate these 3D worlds, almost like Second Life, but kind of Second Life 2.0, if you would. And this is giving a huge opportunity for investors. There's a company called VirBELA and they have done really well. Their ma

Alan recently discussed immersive learning with his partner in life and business, Julie Smithson, on her sister podcast, XR for Learning. We thought it was a good episode, so this week, we're sharing it here for XR for Business listeners. Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson. Alan: And I'm Alan Smithson. Julie: And this is the XR for Learning podcast. Alan: Well… which podcast are we on? Is it mine or yours? Julie: I think it's mine. Alan: Yours, so the XR for Learning podcast. Julie: Yeah. Alan: I'm going to interview you. Julie: Yes. Alan: OK, cool. Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. In all of my episodes, I talk about the way that we need to change the way that we learn and we teach, to adapt to the immersive technologies that are being implemented in enterprise and business today. So today, my guest — my special guest — is Alan Smithson. Alan: Hello. Julie: My partner and husband of almost 20 years. And we're going to talk about education. So welcome. Thanks for being on *my* podcast. Alan: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a little nervous, I'm not going to lie. This is an interesting podcast dynamic. Julie: It really is. We've never done this before. Alan: No, we have not. So I want to ask you questions, because you are the guru in immersive learning systems. So we'll hopefully kind of dig up where this lies, and what we have to do as a society to really push the needle forward. Julie: So what I like to do with all my podcasts is start with a baseline technology. Where are we today? Like, what's going on today? Which is really good question, because it's definitely different than it was six months ago. Alan: I would say, in the industry– I'm coming from the business side of things. What we've seen is there's been a hyper-acceleration of digitization. So in retail and e-com, it has been decimated. People couldn't go to a store physically, and so everything moved online. And in e-commerce, we're seeing shopping trends that would have existed in 2030 happen today. This is trickling down to everything, not only retail, but then also meetings. Everybody's meeting on Zoom these days. Everybody. There's just– we're moving to digital and we're moving to these things much faster than we had ever, ever hoped to do. Plans of digital transformation that would have taken five years are now happening today. So it's an interesting time to revisit and relook at what does education look like in an exponential world of digital transformation. Julie: And this is where the skillsets that are now needed — in enterprise, business, and organizations today to digitally transform — those skillsets are not being taught in the school system today. So COVID coming in and forcing people to virtually connect online, the education systems were forced to actually be online and rethink how they're teaching things. But the unfortunate thing is, is that we didn't get to the point of talking about what we were actually teaching. It was just more of a digital connection for the past six months. Alan: Well, I think since this thing has hit, it's been really just how do we make the technology work in a seamless way that is comfortable for both the teachers and the students? And to be honest, we're not quite there yet. My kids

Geenee is an AR content company granting the wishes of their clients by creating new ways to market to their audiences, from interactive book covers, to hosting live concerts digitally. Geenee's Cory Grenier and Elena de Sosa explain how those who master this new communication format today will dominate the market tomorrow. Alan: Hey, everybody, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Cory Grenier, the chief revenue officer, and Elena DeSosa, director of strategic partnerships at Geenee, a platform that delivers cost effective WebAR and scalable image recognition to the mobile web, powering XR experiences with no app required. We'll be talking about the power of the spatial web to connect us across time, geographies, and space to transform our workplaces and give us superpowers that drive commerce. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Cory and Elena to the show. Welcome. Cory: Hi. It's good to be here, Alan. Elena: Thank you for having us. Alan: Thank you so much for joining me, guys. Cory, we'll start with you. You're the chief revenue officer at Geenee. I met with one of your colleagues, Luke, a few years ago. We became friends. He showed me this Geenee platform. Maybe just give us the sales pitch on what is Geenee? Cory: Geenee is a new SAS WebAR platform, which is-- a scheme on your mind, it's like a Wix for WebAR. So before Wix or Squarespace, there were a lot of web developers, and it was really expensive to hire a developer to make a website. And then there was these companies that came along, decades after the initial Internet, and simplified that creation process through templates and intuitive interface. And that's what we've done with Geenee. And so we have years of proprietary image recognition technology and also tech IP and AR for Web browsers. And so we brought that together in a templatized form to allow anybody to create, publish, and share WebAR experiences directly to the web, without requiring an app. Alan: You've created these, I guess, SLAM algorithms and image recognition algorithms. One of the things that Luke showed me before was the ability to track moving objects or videos. That was pretty cool. Cory: Yeah. And so we've been leveraging that for a range of businesses across the entertainment, book publishing, and CPG brands, to promote soft drinks and so forth. And so it's really unconstrained what vertical you're in, how you can use the power of spatial computing to connect to your consumers and ultimately transact. Alan: So are there examples that we can put in the show notes, that link directly to a live example? Cory: Yeah, there's many that we can direct your audience to. Scholastic just released a new book in the series of The Hunger Games, and we brought the cover to life in an augmented reality experience on the Web. And at the end, you can buy the book across any channel. So we actually have all the purchase sites integrated for some of the movie releases recently. Even during the time of COVID, the studios are looking to connect with consumers in the home and you can experience the film in a 360 environment through AR and learn fan trivia, but also to make a purchase. Every time we believe that AR is a feature, it's not a product, and it's how you use that to connect directly to the business result that the client is looking for to get ROI in that ad spend. Alan: Interesting. It's great. I was just looking at it, and if you want to try, then go to geenee.me, and then you can just search down the case studies and The Hunger Games one is there. So that's pretty cool. How does it work whe

Developing a pilot or a proof of concept is among the first steps to introducing XR into your industry, but that's only going to provide so much ROI unless you can fully implement that idea. Dave Beck from Foundry 45 discusses how to make that leap. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Dave Beck, founder and managing partner at Foundry 45, an immersive technology company that develops enterprise level virtual reality training experiences. They've created over 250 experiences for notable clients such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, Delta, and UPS. We're going to be discussing going from PoCs, pilots, and case studies to full scale deployments. All that and more, on the XR for Business podcast. Dave, welcome to the show. Dave: Hey, Alan, thanks so much for having me on here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. I'm super excited. You guys have been doing so much work in the VR training space. First of all, let's just talk about, what is Foundry 45? How did you get into this? And we'll kick it off from there. Dave: I guess first off, it's nice to chat with you again. I went back and checked my email, and it looks like the first time you and I talked was way back in 2016. So a lot's happened in that time, hasn't it? So, OK, we put VR to work by creating virtual reality training experiences for enterprise partners. And we specialize in industrial-- think hard skills type training. I've actually been working in immersive technology for almost a decade now. Initially it was in augmented reality, which was something that we added on the side for a SAS product we built, that was actually our main business during that time. And we did a lot of stuff where you would hold up your phone or a piece of industrial equipment, and it would tell you where to wrench on it or how to change the filter, things like that. It was cool technology, but we pretty quickly realized that no one was going to hold a phone or an iPad over a piece of industrial equipment on an oil rig. They weren't going to set it down and start wrenching on something, and then pick it up with greasy hands. [chuckles] So what we wanted to do was hands-free AR, but the technology just wasn't there. We exited that company in 2014, and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do when we grow up. Alan: You exited your company in 2014. Most people didn't even know what this technology was when you guys were exiting your first one and getting into the second. Think about that. Dave: Yeah. I mean, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up. And one of my co-founders bought an early innovators edition of Samsung Gear VR. Do you remember that one? Alan: I have the one with a solid strap on top. Dave: Yeah. Did you strap the Android phone into the headset? Alan: Exactly. Dave: Yeah. And you could use that camera on the back of the phone as a pass-through. Alan: Yes. Well, not very well, but yes, you could. Dave: Well, yeah, it's funny. You know where this is going, right? Because we wanted to use it for hands-free AR, but it didn't work at all. Alan: Not without making people very sick. Dave: Yeah, the processor wasn't good enough. It was super laggy, which kind of made it nauseating. So that wasn't going to work. But wow, VR was awesome. That's when we made the decision to start down our current path. Alan: And that was before ARCore and ARKit. So planer tracking really wasn't a thing. Slim mapping, it was not that easy to do. Dave: Yeah. I mean, just

Of all the jobs that are difficult to train for, surgery is especially challenging, what with needing a body and all. But our guest Aravind Upadhyaya is working to make surgical training virtual, with the help of XR technologies. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson, host of the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Aravind Upadhyaya, co-founder and CEO of 8chili, an Oakland, California based startup, bringing the dream of telesurgery to the real world. Today, we're going to talk about how virtual reality is improving the outlook for remote surgeries globally. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. I want to welcome Aravind, thank you so much for joining me on the call. Aravind: Thanks, Alan. It's a real pleasure to be on your podcast, and to get to know you, as well. Alan: It's such an honor. You guys are working on something that is a true game changer for surgeries and remote telemedicine. Maybe just tell us what you're doing and the problem you're solving. Aravind: Definitely. So, just to do a quick intro: I'm a technologist, so I'm an electronics engineer. I've spent the last two decades leading R&D projects in mixed reality, computer vision, Internet of Things, and robotics at one of the biggest, largest conglomerates, the Tata Group. And in 2016, I had my Tony Stark moment when I had the Hololens. It kind of felt like I could hold the power of x-rays in my eyes. And that's when the journey started for 8chili. So we've been working on this technology with surgeons for the last two years, kind of in stealth mode. And this year, GPM, we finally kicked it off. In a nutshell, we wanted to reimagine surgeries with mixed reality, by building a remote collaboration platform. I want to start with this: 60 percent of new residents universally are not confident to perform core procedures. And just about 3 percent of the surgeons globally have access to high quality continuous training. And why is that? And that's because we have a very legacy training system. So, there's a great adage that goes like, "I hear and I forget. I see. And I remember. I do and I understand." And that's why we are building NAVIX AIR, because experience cannot be explained. So you have to experience to really get to be an expert. And NAVIX AIR allows residents to experience what a surgeon does in a surgery. So this, what we want to do, is take the platform to a very immersive collaborative experience. Now, NAVIX AIR is a platform that allows residents to transform into the surgeons eyes and follow their steps simultaneously in the virtual world, without disturbing the surgeon. So let's say you can fail and repeat as many times as you want, even post the live surgery. And the big difference is being able to see what the surgeon sees brings this feel of reality into the residence. And that's what is missing in the cadavers or the existing VR simulators. Because what happens is no surgery goes smoothly or perfectly. There are complications, there are surprises that happen, like another surgeons encounter. And these cannot be captured. So it's the surgeons experience that come into play when something is not going as they expect it to go. And this feel of how to react in such a situation-- let's say, what does a surgeon do? What is the communication that they used to talk to the nurse, the anesthesiologist, or the other juniors who are helping the surgeon? Or what kind of technique? Like, if there is a bleed which was unexpected, how do they go about tackling that? So all these things are scenarios that will be happening in the real world. So there's no substitute for it. Alan: That makes a lot of sense. So when a surgeon is operating, when these things pop up, it's almost impossible to train for every scenario, but you can record it. Aravi

Happy Finish's CEO Daniel Cheetham's XR bread and butter was virtual experiences and LBEs, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay indoors. Now, he explains, he's exploring the power VR has to help enterprise and the environment. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Daniel Cheetham, CEO of Happy Finish, a creative technology and content firm based in London, UK. They've done XR experiences for Ford, Exxon Mobil, and many more. We will learn today how they're using digital twins to add real business value. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Daniel, welcome to the show, my friend. Daniel: Thanks for having me. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. I've been looking forward to having you on the show for so long. It's really exciting, the stuff you guys have done. You've done everything from putting people from the real world into VR on a bicycle, to help give them a sense of what it's like to be on the other side of a driving scenario. You've done all sorts of things. Tell us, what is Happy Finish? Daniel: So, Happy Finish -- or HF, as we're now more commonly referring to ourselves -- we're really in the space of creating content and experiences for grand clients, right from the very beginning. And this is second hand information; I joined Happy Finish about six, six and a half years ago. Now the business is fifteen years old. We have been employing post-production and CGI techniques to create versions of the real world -- or different flavors of the real world -- over the last six to seven years. I think we built a reputation in the immersive technology space. We started working really early on with the DK-1 from Kickstarter, testing, playing around with Unity, seeing what we could do, up to now where we're easily 200+ commercially funded, brand funded XR experiences. And we work across the whole gamut of immersive tech, from 360 video -- which is less the flavor of the month now -- through to real time based experiences across Microsoft Hololens 2, and in AR. Alan: I've got a call one thing, that I saw here on your site, and I just got to ask: VR bungee jumping? Daniel: [laughs] One of my crazy ideas. It was in the context, we were chatting -- watercooler moment -- chatting about how we could make some noise about untethered VR, particularly around the Oculus Quest. And it just dawned on me as well, what better way to really test what can be done in untethered VR, than tether it to a bungee rope and have somebody jump off a bungee platform? Alan: So were you the first one to try this? Daniel: I wasn't, actually. We a couple of guinea pigs who put their hand up first, but I did try it in the end. It was not without its challenges. We were really putting the tracking system on the Quest to its absolute limits. And so on a few occasions, it was bungee jumping with a blindfold, rather than in VR. Alan: [laughs] Still pretty amazing that you even bit that off. So was it a brand activation, or was this just an internal--? Daniel: This is an in-house piece for us. And back until very recently, an area of focus for us was LB. So we've created a number of -- I think -- pretty recognizable motion platform based VR experiences. One that I know got a lot of sharing couple of years ago, that lives at the top of The Shard -- the tallest building here in London -- where the user will fly virtually -- or slide virtually -- around the top of The Shard. We got a lot of screamers and yeah, we had a real focus on building out that as a product. We have four or five of these VR slides around the world now. However, LB has taken somewhat of a hit --

With the recent launch of the MetaVRse 3D content creation engine, Alan chats with Sikaar Keita from Oracle's XR LAB about what he's building and why he thinks it's a game-changer. Alan: Hey, everybody. My name's Alan Smithson, the host of the XR for Business Podcast, and today we have a very special guest, Sikaar Keita from Oracle. Sikaar is the customer experience specialist and XR lab leader, based in France. And today, we're going to discuss how Sikaar is using the new MetaVRse web-based 3D creation platform to invent the future of customer experiences. All that more coming up next, on the XR for Business Podcast. Sikaar, it's such a pleasure to have you. Sikaar: Thank you very much. Alan: Today is a very special day for me personally, because we're going to talk about something near and dear to my heart, the MetaVRse platform. We've been working on this for four years, and we finally came out of beta, and we released it to the world June 1st at AWE this year. But while it was in beta, you got in there and you started creating some crazy things. And I really want to dive in there. But let's maybe just have in your own words, what is the MetaVRse platform and why did you choose to start working on it? Sikaar: So basically, it comes with two main things that were really key to us. The first one is that it's a WebXR tool. And we really believe that leveraging the web to deploy XR experiences is really what will drive adoption. Also, it was super easy to use, and the way we were prototyping really changed leveraging this platform, compared to what we usually do with other platforms. Alan: So what is the normal path to prototyping, compared to this workflow? Sikaar: Normally what we would do is that we would do sketches like most design agencies would do. And we sometimes leverage 360 degree virtual tours, because it's super easy to showcase something very quickly to stakeholders, which has a sufficient quality to make them understand what the project is about. And what we figured out is just that leveraging MetaVRse, it was extremely fast to build things that looks good. So we are usually buying our models, we don't model everything ourselves. But it was super easy to come up with something that was good enough to be seen, and to help us get budget, or get the stakeholders' approval to move forward. And that was really a game changer for us. Alan: The amazing thing that we noticed is that you hadn't been on the platform more than a few days and you started doing things that we had never contemplated ever being done. And one of them blew our minds: you connected an IoT sensor to our web-based 3D platform. Can you tell us, what was the thought process behind that? How did you come up with that? Sikaar: So basically what we do in the Oracle XR lab is testing, prototyping, and training every possible integration of XR technology with Oracle technologies. And so in this endeavour, we emphasize what comes with feeding XR experiences with data, but also getting data out of XR experiences into record systems. So it just felt normal to get this IoT device connected with an XR experience, so we can drive the experience from out of it, and also get the data back. So basically the idea behind it is very known in the engineering industry and it's all about digital twins. But we have our own platform for that at Oracle. And the idea was can I connect it with MetaVRse, and especially how long would it-- actually, it was done in a flash. Alan: What made it so quick, though? One of the things that I didn't understand is how did you connect it? Is it because of the ability to code in i

In countries like China, the camera on a smartphone isn't just for fun selfies -- it's an everyday practical device, for everything from banking to shopping. Michael Agustin wants to fast track this sort of adoption in the west by giving retailers AR IoT technology with Curie. Alan: Hey there, it's Alan Smithson with the XR for Business Podcast. And today we're speaking with Michael Agustin, co-founder and CEO of Curie. They're an augmented reality shopping platform that enables consumers to make better purchasing decisions quickly and visually. All that coming up on the XR for Business Podcast. Michael, welcome to the show, my friend. Michael: Thanks for having me on. Alan: I'm so excited. We had the opportunity to meet recently at., well, these two things, really. It was the VRARA gathering in San Francisco, and then we went from there to Verizon's head office and we went for a meetup where we learned from Apple and a bunch of other people about what's coming up in virtual reality. So it was really great to meet you in person. I want to unpack what you've been doing, but let's talk about what is Curie? We're Curie-ous. Michael: Yeah. So I see that you're AI-curious. So Curie is an AR shopping assistant that allows people to make decisions very quickly. This sort of ties in to the journey of any customer that is looking to make a purchase about any type of thing. So we're kind of giving people this on-screen HUD, to be able to make decisions on the fly about any different type of product, especially the ones that they would want to save money on. And it also enables retailers to sort of keep other apps from participating in show-rooming in their stores. So we're looking at big box stores by giving them the powers of augmented reality and enabling all of the same tools that shoppers would typically have online, offline. So things like online reviews and movies and people who bought this also buy these things. Alan: That's really interesting. I think it's it's something that's coming really quickly. And, you know, you guys have listed on your website that you're computer vision company. Walk me through the consumer experience of this. So I have my phone. I'm in a store. I point my phone at a pair of shoes. It recognizes the shoes and says, here's some Amazon reviews on it -- or some reviews from that store, I guess -- and then here's some other things that you might like that aren't necessarily in the physical store, correct? Michael: Yeah. So typically, you don't have these tools available to you offline. The reason why we say we're a computer vision company is that computer vision is like G.P.S. for your camera. So think about all the times you use G.P.S. and Waze and Yelp and Google Maps. We're doing that from a first-person perspective and providing the ability to sort of connect to things that are in front of you, via services and information. The reason why you would want to do this is that information is typically still not in front of you when you need it, but it's available online. So we were named after Marie Curie, who sort of dedicated her life to seeing what was invisible. And we would argue that right, now information is invisible, and you can't really see it when you need it on top of things. Alan: Amazing. So are there any companies actively deploying this now, or is this still in early phases, or where were you in the food chain of startups? Michael: So our lead investor is 500 Startups, and we are gaining customers through a program that's backed by Wal-Mart and Sam's Club and Tyson. We're talking to several OEMs and other types of retailers about incorporating our technology into their shopping apps. Alan: Inter

With the next generation of Playstation set to hit shelves this holiday season, the big news in the gaming circuit is the revelation of Unreal Engine 5. But this game engine is good for more than just the next top video game experience. Unreal Engine manager Marc Petit explains the many other use cases this technology promises. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Marc Petit, general manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games. If you're not familiar with Epic Games, ask your kids. They're probably playing a video game built on their development engine. For example, Fortnite is built by them. We'll be discussing the myriad ways 3D and XR can be used for organizations. And of course, what's coming up with Unreal Engine 5? All that more on the XR for Business podcast. I am super excited and thrilled to invite Marc Petit on the show. Marc, welcome to the show. Marc: Well, thanks for having me, Alan, and thanks for the introduction. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. This has been one of those episodes that I've been really excited. And I don't want to hear myself talk anymore, so please tell us, what is Unreal Engine, and how is it being is now OK? Marc: Well, that's a pretty broad topic. So first of all, maybe we'll go back to the basics. What is a game engine? A game engine is a piece of software, it does a lot of things in real time. What is a game? I mean, a game is everything about a simulated world and a story mixed together. So what a game engine do, they can provide you with real time simulated worlds and/or stories. It's based on complex technology, like real time rendering and rules and physics. But at the end of the day, you can be and interact with the virtual world. And I think that's all XR is about, is empowering and connecting the virtual and the real. So game engine, we're kind of the-- think of it as an operating system for visual development. That's the software on which you can build a game like Fortnite, or you can build a car configurator. So where this lower layer of software comes as a bunch of tools. Alan: One of the basic things that people misunderstand is that 3D is a little bit different than creating a PowerPoint deck. There's a lot more to it involved, you're rendering many more things all at once. Marc: Yeah, no, absolutely. Again, think of it of a simulated world. I mean, good 3D, things react when you interact with them. And so you have-- somebody has to go and program those multiple layers of artificial intelligence to bring the right look and also the right behavior of things in the virtual world. So what the game engine does it makes this process very easy, makes it a cross-platform. It's a very, very involved and complex piece of technology. But for users, it's pretty simple to use and that's all we are about: making that process much, much simpler for everybody. Alan: So one of the things that you guys just released is a video showing the new PlayStation 5 running the Unreal Engine, and the demo was -- and I'll quote -- there's billions of polygons running. I think we start with, what's a "polygon" and why is that important to be able to push so much data? And how does that pertain to a business? How would a business use that then? Marc: Polygons and triangles, this is how we present 3D geometry in the virtual space. It's basically a way to represent the v

Why trek up to the Arctic circle to capture 360 footage of the aurora borealis yourself, when you can license stunning footage someone else already shot? That was Alan's thinking when he availed Blend Media of their services, whose founder — Damian Collier — is our guest. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Damian Collier, co-founder and CEO of Blend Media, a centralized hub for all things VR and AR content. From stock 360 images and videos, right up to fully customized interactive experiences. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Damian, welcome to the show. Damian: Hey, Alan. How are you? Alan: I'm so amazing. It's been a long time since we spoke. I think the first time we met was probably four or five years ago, when you started this wonderful journey. How did you get here? Damian: Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking back to a panel that we did at VR LA, which must be at least three, if not four years ago. It must be about that time. Alan: Got to be four years ago, yeah. Damian: It's crazy how time flies. And obviously, having been in VR and AR, we've seen peaks and troughs, and ups and downs, and all in between. Alan: That panel, because it was with-- the one with Saul Rodgers, right? Damian: That's right. Alan: I haven't had Saul on the show, I haven't reached out him. That panel at VR LA, to me, was like the pinnacle of the VR hype. That event was so amazing. And it seems like we kind of took a step back a bit in subsequent years, and now it's starting to pick up again. Damian: Yeah, it was great. It was a big event. But you know what? This week I attended Laval virtually. And I think they had something like ten thousand attendees and dozens, if not up into hundreds of speakers. And I have to say, for me, it really felt engaging. I didn't attend in the headset. I attended it on the web app that they built. But it felt buzzing. It felt-- there were some great presentations and keynotes. Alan: I have to say yes, where was: my wife, Julie Smithson, was one of them. [laughs] Damian: Oh, great. I'm sorry to say I missed Julie's lecture, but I saw some great keynotes. Alan: What was the highlight of Laval Virtual for you? Damian: Well, I think it was reconnecting with people virtually. There were people there that I -- like you -- I haven't seen physically for some time. And seeing their avatars and waving at them across the room, and then kind of setting up separate meetings together, it was really well done. Alan: Amazing. The last time I was on your site, there was Blend Media, and then it ended up being Blend Market, Blend Stock, Blend Studio. Walk us through kind of the progression of where you were when we met, and where you are now and what's what's changed. Damian: Yeah, we started off as just a new footage business, because I am a serial entrepreneur, they say. I have businesses all in the content space. So that is my background, kind of rights management, IP. My last business was a viral video business that I sold in 2014. And I just had this idea when Mark Zuckerberg posted the first 360 video around about November 2015, I just had this idea for creating what I guess would be described as the Getty Images for 360 video. And that was the original idea. And I raised a bit of seed money, built the first platform in the first part of 2016 as a 360 video stock footage site, helping creators monetize their 360 video content through a platform. Alan: I have to interj

IKEA might be best known for its affordable furniture, cartoon building instructions, and hard-to-pronounce product names, but that's not all its about. They're also exploring how they can improve lives with XR technology, as Martin Enthed explains.  Alan: Hey everyone, I'm Alan Smithson. Today we're speaking with Martin Enthed, digital manager at IKEA Communications, who's also part of the IKEA Digital Lab, looking five to seven years out into the future of how we bring retail to the masses. Martin is also part of the Khronos Group, an organization working on the open standards for spatial web and 3D world. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Martin, welcome to the show. Martin: Thank you, Alan. And thank you for having me here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. This interview has been long overdue. You've had to get a ton of approvals and everything. So we're very, very lucky and honored to have you on the show. And thank you so much for joining us. Let's get into it. Maybe you can describe how you got to where you are, and the role that you're at with IKEA. Martin: I started 13 years ago now in 2007, and I was hired to try to make use of computer graphics into a volume production, instead of just doing a few models or images a year or two, large volumes. And building those back-end tools, coding, setting up standards and everything, up to 2011. And then they hired me to do all development for that company, IKEA Communications. And I've been the IT manager and development manager for that all the way up to now, two years ago, when I became digital manager there. Then I headed up what's called IKEA Digital Lab, that you mentioned. Now I'm working mainly with that, looking into the spatially aware 3D future. Alan: So how is IKEA using these tools now? Because I think it's a big shock, when you explained to me how the magazine that we get, some of the photos in there aren't real photographs, they're renders. Martin: That story has been told a few times. But if I take it very short, it started really in volume 2012-ish. So it took like from 2007 to 2012. And in 2011-2012 we did about 10 to 12,000 high-res images a year, and I would say maybe 1,500 of them were 3D. In the last five, six years we have been doing about 50,000 high risk images a year. And about 35,000 of them is 3D, mainly the product images and those things you find there. And then, of course, a lot of kitchen brochures and such are 3D. You take a kitchen brochure from our stores and look at through that one, you will see a lot of 3D. If you take the IKEA catalog, then it's much, much, much less, because most of the time we also do video sessions in those. And that's so much easier to do in a real set. But it's a lot of 3D. But that's the offline rendering stuff, that's in huge production right now. Alan: So that's kind of pervasive now. So when you're looking at the kitchen catalogue, most of those renters are all in 3D. It's funny, because Helen Papagiannis -- author of Augmented Human -- she's got this game, "Augmented Reality Or Real?" And I've gone through the magazine, I can't tell. I really can't tell what's real and what's 3D. So kudos to you guys for making it realistic. So we render something and we have the best quality of everything. What about real time rendering? I know a couple of years ago you guys experimented with VR and also the IKEA Place app, and real time rendering of spatial objects. What's kind of on the roadmap there? Martin: The exploration stuff internally started already in 2010, when we made some things that was running in a browser, and then we sent off a small little file that's told how that sce

Labster CEO Michael Jensen was on XR for Learning not-too-long ago, talking about how XR can teach kids science in the classroom. Now he explains to Alan how that same technology is making professional training safer and more cost-effective. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Michael Jensen, CEO of Labster, a venture backed, award winning company that focuses on revolutionizing the way science and safety is taught at companies, universities, colleges, and high schools all over the world. They started with creating multimillion dollar science labs in a VR headset. And now they're ready to take on the enterprise training world. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Michael, welcome to the show. Michael: Hey, Alan, thanks so much, honored to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure to have you. I know you were on my partner and wife Julie's podcast, XR for Learning. And I learned all about how Labster is revolutionizing how we teach science, and making it more exciting, gamified, but also bringing the opportunity to create multi-million dollar science labs for the cost of a cup of coffee. So let's unpack that. Michael, how did you get into this? Michael: Yeah, so that actually started about nine years ago, when my co-founder and I saw an opportunity to create much more engaging online learning content for students and learners around the world. Basically, most people were learning in very boring, non-engaging formats as we saw it. And at the same time, we saw these billions of dollars being invested into the gaming industry to create really engaging games. And we thought, why not find a way to combine and merge the learning world and the gaming world in a more engaging way, so that we can engage learners in the content, make them more excited about the topics, but also use these mechanisms to help them understand some of these more complex concepts in a much better way. Alan: Walk people through what a typical Labster lab looks like, and why this is exciting. Michael: There's two main components that we really looked at. One is engagement -- as I just talked about -- and the other one is timesaving, cost savings. And so what we looked at was, how can we best address some of the biggest challenges in the industry by presently creating virtual training -- similar to a flight simulator that was revolutionizing pilot training -- and then create, for instance, virtual laboratories to simulate dangerous experiments or dangerous scenarios -- like safety training -- and then that way help the universities, in our case as well as high schools -- but now also corporates -- dramatically reduce their cost and saving, as well as the time spent on this training. And we did a huge research project now -- about two years ago -- a $6-million research project involving hundreds and hundreds of employees around the world in large pharma companies, to really analyze and understand, does this really help? Is there a way for us to create better, more engaging content? And if so, does that really help students or learners understand it better? And does it also help save costs? And the results were quite overwhelmingly positive, was published and peer reviewed -- among others -- in Nature magazine, where we saw more than a doubling of the learning outcomes, as well as engagement for learners, compared to -- for instance -- standard online e-learning training, or even personal one-on-one training. So even compared to a personal one-on-one trainer, we found that this virtual immersive training format can be far superior, both in costs, as

Even in a virtual world, you still sweat. That's why it's important to keep your HMDs clean, especially if there's multiple users. Cleanbox devised UV light technology for just such a purpose, then found a higher calling during the Coronavirus. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here, with the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Amy Hedrick, co-founder and CEO of Cleanbox, a smart technology hygiene company that's providing hospital grade decontamination of shared hardware, which I guess we can all agree right now, is very necessary in the current situation. In this podcast, we'll also learn how the team at Cleanbox is helping hospitals maintain mask hygiene. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Amy, welcome. Amy: Thank you, Alan. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for taking time. I know you are crazy busy, working probably 20 hour days right now. You are on the front lines, bringing hygiene in a time where it could not be more important. So thank you for joining us and taking the time. Amy: It's my pleasure. I'm happy to do it. And you're right. It is very timely. Everybody's focus right now -- globally -- is on hygiene and public safety and public responsibility, and how we can better stay safe when we're able to go back out in the world. Alan: Absolutely. So I'm going to get right into it. I know you were working with the VR community very heavily, but I think right now this is just kind of top of mind with everybody. So maybe in your own words, you can explain what Cleanbox Technologies does. Amy: Sure. Well, OK, so Cleanbox technology provides hospital grade decontamination of shared hardware. We designed our core technology with-- actually with XR in mind, with the idea and the belief that virtual and augmented reality had great potential in terms of business and enterprise purposes, as well as in healthcare, and of course, entertainment. Seeing the value there and thinking ahead of what would be the pain points that would prevent a successful global deployment, or a successful corporate deployment, and adequate actual consumer adoption. Few years ago, thinking back on how we would be able to meet some of those pain points and eliminate them and lower the barrier of entry, hygiene seemed to be one of those things that was easy to forget. So with XR technology, it's so sexy and there's a lot of very interesting and cool and unique things you can do with it. So the logistics sometimes gets gets a little bit lost. We came at the XR community from the point of risk mitigation. How could we reduce the risk of contagion transfer and thus some detrimental event happening within the industry? And we've grown since then. Alan: So right now it's an interesting time, because we're all stuck at home. So things like location based entertainment facilities are empty. Where is your business coming from now? I know you-- from speaking with one of your advisors, Terry Schussler, that you're booming right now. You can't fulfill the orders fast enough. Where's this business coming from, if it's not coming from location based entertainment? Amy: Well, we've always been addressing multiple markets at once. Location based entertainment is, of course, first and foremost in people's minds because that's -- I guess -- the best education for the average consumer into what immersive technology can do. So it's-- and it's very dear to my origins and we definitely take care of the LB community. On that note, I would say that there are plenty of organizations looking forward to the day that they can reopen, and realizing that not only just the idea of hygiene, but actual hygiene is really critically important to reopening those busine

For most of the world, a cross-country, gapless 5G network is still the realm of futurists. One exception is South Korea, where a 5G network is quickly proliferating. Korea Telecom's Joonmo Park discusses how his company is using the network to evangelize VR. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Joonmo Park, new media business development manager at Korea Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in South Korea. We're going to be talking about 5G, virtual reality and transportation. All that coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Joonmo, welcome to the show, my friend. Joonmo: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Alan. And I'm really happy to be here. Alan: It's an absolute honor to have you on the show. I was really impressed with some of the work that I've been seeing come out of Korea. And I was very impressed to find out that it was the work of you and your team, that have put these things together. So maybe just talk about the projects that you've been working on at KT Tel. Joonmo: Okay. Our company -- KT -- is the largest telecommunications company in South Korea, with more than 30 years of experience in mobile telephone service, and broadcasting, and Internet. And I've been with the company for over three years across a variety of different functions, including business strategy, B2C business, and B2B business. But about one and half years ago, as a company, we decided to establish a dedicated team that's purely focused on what's new and what's next. So we focused on the emerging consumer landscape and the emerging technology landscape, and make sure that the KT brand continues to be relevant not only today, but five or ten years from now. So we are focusing on looking at new business models and emerging technologies, then tying those to our strategy businesses. So we wanted to make sure that any new innovation that we bring into the society has a lasting impact. But more importantly, a monetary impact that is actually moving the needle. So to introduce a little bit about South Korean XR market, South Korea's telecom operators are really striving to create the right range of immersive mixed reality content to leverage their 5G network and attract more customers. And there are three local carriers, including SK Telecom, and Korea Telecom, and LG Uplus. And they rolled out their 5G network in the nation in April 2019, and together are drawing more than three million subscribers in the first seven months of the launch. Alan: Sorry, three million subscribers to the new 5G network? Joonmo: Yes, right. Alan: So do these people have 5G devices? Is there a lot of 5G devices available? Joonmo: Yes, right. Because as the launch of Galaxy S10 with 5G, and that many people bought that device and using 5G network right now. Alan: That's incredible. So how many would you estimate are using the 5G network with 5G devices? Joonmo: I think until the end of the 2020, more than the five million people will use it. Alan: Wow, that's way far ahead of North America. In Canada, we have zero 5G deployment. We only have it in research parks and research areas. Joonmo: Well, you need to think about that. South Korea is a very small country with very many numbers of populations. So it is really easy for companies to make the decision to build new 5G infrastructures, because even though they build small 5G networks, many people would use that. So many tech companies feel that building a 5G networks is attracting more money than just using 4G network. Alan: So how is 5G -- or just the ability to h

Seeing is believing, but in the age of 3D product views through AR technology, seeing is also conceptualizing. Simply Augmented CEO Boaz Ashkenazy comes on the show to explain how AR-enabled 3D viewing will revolutionize everything from how we shop, to how we work. Alan: Hey everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Boaz Ashkenazy from SimplyAugmented. We're going to be talking about how 3D is revolutionizing furniture views and products on the web. All that coming up on the XR for Business podcast. Boaz, welcome to the show, my friend. Boaz: Hey, thank you very much. It's good to be here. Alan: Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I love the work you guys are doing. Let's get right into it. What is it that SimplyAugmented does, and how is it benefiting your customers now? Boaz: Well, we have a 3D platform that benefits customers both in the sales and marketing teams, and one of our products is called Simply3D. It allows for sales and marketing teams to easily share augmented reality. We found a lot of challenges around sharing augmented reality online and Simply3D.io is a vehicle for helping folks share. And we also create product and room configurators that exist online that allow people to experience environments and products really easily with augmented reality integration. Alan: So I got a chance to try one of the samples. I got to configure a-- it was like a quiet room or almost like a study room for open office furniture. So you go in, you close the door, and make yourself a phone call or whatever, but I got to configure it on the web. I hit a button, and it was in my living room here, this giant pod. And I was like, "Oh wow. This pod is huge in real life." So it was a great understanding of how big these things are, and I think that's truly the power of this technology. Maybe you can speak to some of the specific clients that you've worked with. What are they seeing, results wise? Boaz: You know what's interesting about what you said is a lot of folks have trouble visualizing products at scale, especially with the bigger the product, the harder it is to visualize. I am an architect by training. And I spent years designing spaces, and a lot of times people are surprised about what those designs end up looking like, because it's hard to understand objects at scale. And the pods that you mentioned, they're called Nook pods. And they're large rooms within a room, basically. You can have a quiet room inside an open office, which is pretty typical these days. For two people for four people, for one person. And to see it online and configure it is one thing, but to see it in the environment and walk into is another. One of the things that we recognized was there was two things that people really wanted to do. They wanted to quickly customize any of their products -- We're used to doing it with cars and vehicles, customize your products with colors, with options -- but then immediately be able to drop that in your environment and walk around it, look underneath it, walk inside it. And that's really what our configurator does. One of the challenges that a lot of folks face in the XR space is how do you spin up augmented reality with so many possible variations? That's the hard part about building these configurators. There's so many options, that you would never be able to create the augmented reality content beforehand. You wouldn't be able to predict it. And so what we've done is we've allowed for on-demand, real time augmented reality, depending on the choices that you make. Alan: So once I've configured it -- and I don't know, I didn't actually think about this until now -- but once I've configured -- let's say -- the Nook and I drop it

Surface miners, like the ones safety instructor Nick Ullrich teaches, get to play with some pretty big toys, like loading trucks with tires three times taller than the average person. But tires that big come with some pretty big blind spots, and Nick is using VR to get them used to those blind spots before putting them behind those gigantic wheels. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast, with your host, Alan Smithson. We all know safety comes first, and today, we're speaking with Nick Ullrich, a safety instructor from Gillette College, who's focused on using VR to train mining employees to become safer and better operators. Coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Nick, welcome to the show. Nick: Yes, Alan, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Alan: Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I read an article about how you're using VR to train mining employees. How did you get into this? Tell us a little bit about your background. Nick: Ok. Yeah, so the first project that we've done is a blind spot recognition, using virtual reality 360 photography as well. And it's to help miners -- when they're on the mine side -- understand the blind spots of heavy equipment. So we started with that because MSHA -- the Mine Safety and Health Administration -- has an initiative out there about powered haulage. And that's kind of where the idea came from. We see fatalities every year in the mining world. So I wanted to give everybody an understanding of what the blind spots for the heavy equipment that they're working around are on, and give them an idea of that. And virtual reality gave us an opportunity to do that without actually having to have all the equipment here at the college. So it works out great to give them a vision of what they would see if they were in that equipment. Alan: That's pretty cool. So you're talking about those big, huge dump trucks with the giant wheels and loaders and all these type of things? Nick: Yeah, absolutely. We have-- in the program that we have now, we have 10 pieces of equipment, it includes the 400 ton haul trucks, which is the largest haul trucks in the world. Those tires are approximately 15 feet high. Alan: Whoa. Nick: Yeah, next to them, you will go about to the middle of the tire. Alan: That's incredible. So you've got these trucks. Now, did you create them as 3D models and then climb inside of it? Or is this taken from like a 360 video type of thing? Nick: So we do a couple different things with it. We do have 3D models of all the pieces of equipment. So like I said, we have about ten pieces of equipment right now, and we just have 3D models of those, where people can walk around them virtually and see how big they are, put them to actual size or as close as I could get to actual size, by my recollection of them. They can get into them -- for the most part -- and just kind of see it in a virtual spot. And then we did go out to all the different mine sites and take 360 photography of each of those pieces of equipment. And we did it a really cool way. We set up a scene, so we had a whole lot of different things around the piece of equipment. So let's just say a haul trip, we have several different people and smaller vehicles, like light duty vehicles, such as just your normal pickup or van. We had those all set up in a special way, where you couldn't see them from the cab, so they were *in* the blind spots of that equipment. We took that 360 photo from the cab of that piece of equipment, so we can show everybody what the cab looks like and what they could see outside of it, knowing that they couldn't see any of the things in the blind s

Aggreko's in the business of temporary power - you need an outdoor installation set up for electricity? They're who to call. But that means that the less time to train, the better. Walter Davis explains how AR is helping trim some time off a new employee's intake. Alan: Hey, everybody, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we're speaking with Walter Davis, head of talent and learning technology at Aggreko. We'll be learning about how they're using XR to train technicians and speed up their time to competency, for new and existing employees. All that and more on the XR for Business podcast. Walter, welcome to the show. Walter: Thanks, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: Really excited. Why don't you start by telling us your role at Aggreko and how you started working in XR in this role? I think first thing to do might help to paint a picture of maybe what Aggreko does, which will help in then showing how we're applying augmented reality to our services. So, Aggreko is the largest provider of temporary power and cooling solutions. We work in over 100 countries and we power things like Super Bowl here in the US, which many of you might know, or the Olympics that are coming up in Japan. That's another project we're doing. We also work everywhere, from remote parts of Africa, to powering up a data center that needs some backup power. So we're sort of everywhere in the background, if you would. Just ensuring that major events and operations run smoothly. And with that, obviously, we need to ensure that we are providing an expert service and minimize any potential downtime. We need to have expert staff to support that. Alan: So basically, if the lights stay on, you guys are there. Walter: Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. We make it a point to ensure that we have a highly reliable service. Alan: So I was reading, Aggreko specializes in seven key areas, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, petrochemicals, construction. And then events, the live events thing almost seems like an add-on to this, but it seems to fit perfectly. Walter: It does, yeah. So events are really what we're known for, right? I mean, that's where we will pop up on occasion. Actually, I could say that we are actually in one-- we're in a recent country music video in the background, because we are powering the stage that they recorded the music video at. But yeah, like I said, keeping the lights on, making sure that entertainment can happen, events can happen, and everybody has a comfortable experience. Alan: So how does VR/AR/XR relate to temporary power? Walter: With the nature of our business -- as we operate in over 100 countries -- we operate very broadly but very agilely. And one of the challenges that we tend to sometimes have is ensuring that we can bring new hires and products together really in that introductory period of time, when someone is just joining the organization. We don't always necessarily have every type of fleet available for them to familiarize themselves with and educate themselves on, to start developing those competencies. And where we're seeing AR in particular, is in allowing those individuals to gain that knowledge really right when they join the organization. They're able to go through an immersive experience in full scale, so as if the product was right in front of them. Going-- both familiarizing themselves with the key components and aspects of the product, but also going through a key service procedures th

Today's guest got his start in the world of game development. But soon, Arash Keshmirian saw the writing on the wall that XR's current usefulness was better-suited to the worlds of industry, retail, and journalism. Arash and Alan discuss how he made that transition. Alan: Hey, everyone, it's Alan Smithson here, the host of the XR for Business podcast. Today we have Arash Keshmirian, co-founder of Extality. His personal goal is to create powerful content that delivers results. We're going to dig into using Magic Leap and Hololens and mixed reality headsets as a tool for business. So all that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Arash, welcome to the show, my friend. Arash: Thank you for having me. Great to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. You guys have done some pretty cool stuff. I was on your website playing with a shoe. What is Extality? Arash: Were a lot of things to many people. So we built Extality out of a long, 10 year experience in the games industry, building mobile games. Did a lot of games, including Zombie Gunship, which ended up being this kind of worldwide sensation of shooting zombies from an airplane. That company -- Limbic -- we ended up doing a lot of XR stuff. And kind of around 2016, 17, 18 we built a game for ARKit, called Zombie Gunship Revenant. And that ended up being a huge hit across the app store. Apple featured it a whole bunch of times. It was one of the 2017 games of the year. And it spread ARKit to a lot of people, trying new things on their new iPhones. And we later did a project called Zombie Guns Raptor with Oculus and Oculus Go, Gear VR. But really kind of around that time -- 2017 -- we started to feel like it was getting way too crowded in the games business, and we were starting to look around and try to figure out what we could do with our experience in high-performance graphics and making cool experiences, immersive experiences. I started talking to a guy named Ryan Peterson, who's the founder of a CEO called Finger Food out in Vancouver. And he was telling me about all these exciting opportunities in AR and VR for enterprises. He was talking about how they'd saved millions and millions of dollars for a truck company that was looking to move their design to virtual reality from using clay models. And this got our head scratching, we were like, "You know, maybe there's an opportunity to use all of our games experience, to help big companies and do more than just give people an entertaining hour on their phones." So we founded a new company called Extality. And we set out to essentially discover companies that really wanted to explore XR, be it on their phones, on headsets, iPods -- every type of XR -- and leverage our background in doing just really hard graphics problems, building scalable global servers and connectivity, all those hard things that you learn how to do making games, we quickly realized that we're super, super applicable to building enterprise solutions as well. Alan: Actually, I know Ryan very well from Finger Food, really great guy. And they've done some amazing work in the space. What are some of the highlights that you've done for enterprise? And first of all, I just want to say that having a flying zombie shooter game? Pretty awesome. Arash: [chuckles] Thank you. Alan: The fact you guys had a hit with ARKit is pretty amazing, because there's not too much out there leveraging the power of ARKit yet. Arash: Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about games for just a second, it's an interesting thing. I mean, it gives people a totally different experience using their phone as the controller and running around the room. We have all these videos during our user tests

Making any sort of head-mounted AR display has been a challenge, both on the technology front, and from an adaptation standpoint. But Stefan Alexander from North challenged himself even further - by making them look chic, to boot. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here, with the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Stefan Alexander, vice president of Advanced R&D for North, the company this created Focals, the world's first consumer AR glasses. And of course, they're also a Canadian company. And we're really excited to talk about their new product, North Focals 2. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Stefan, welcome to the show. Stefan: Thanks, it's great to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. As you know, I have had a pair of North glasses for almost-- actually over a year now. I was one of the first 100 people to be lucky enough to get these. I went in for my fitting in Toronto, got these wonderful glasses, I got my little ring. And I proceeded to try all sorts of different things. And super excited to have you on the call and really learn more about what's coming up next for North. Stefan: Yeah, great. Alan: Maybe you can just describe the North glasses to the listeners, and how they came about. Stefan: So, I can give you a kind of brief history of how this whole thing started. So originally when North was founded, it was actually called Thalmic Labs, and the product was a gesture control armband. So this kind of went on your upper forearm. You could make motions with your hand and it would detect your muscle movements and you could control computers, music, do presentation control. But one of the things that they were really passionate about was controlling heads-up displays like Google Glass, which had just come out at the time. I was actually the first person hired to not work on the Myo, that was this armband. And about a year before it came out, they hired me and they said, "Stefan, we think that the control of smart glasses and the control of head mounted displays is really important. But we're not sure if anybody's going to make exactly what we have in mind, what we think is gonna be so big, which is glasses that look exactly like regular glasses. And we don't know the tech to do this, and I don't think it exists yet. But can we work on a way to do these type of smart glasses?" So I had a display background. I was working at OLED displays. And so I started this research program, that turned into the first generation of Focals. And eventually it got so good that it really just took over the company, and we stopped doing the gesture control and we've just kind of went all in on smart glasses and changed our name to North. And that's kind of how we ended up where we are. Alan: That's fantastic. I wonder-- you started off life as a gesture armband. And it's funny, because I remember this. I was part of the Ryerson Digital Media Zone at the time. And I went to Communitech, which is where North was founded, or I guess Thalmic Labs at the time. Stefan: Yeah, yeah. Alan: And I remember going into this tiny little lab with I think there was probably 10 people at the time, and they said, "Hey, try this thing on your forearm." And it was this kind of stretchy, almost like a bracelet with a bunch of black sensors on it. And after that, I went on to create The Emulator, which was the see-through touchscreen DJ controller. And we worked-- we ended up working with Armin Van Buren, who w

Code is a big part of what makes XR work, of course. But for most businesses, knowing the DNA of the technology will be less important than knowing how to best use it. XR Bootcamp co-founder Ferhan Ozkan is enabling businesses interested in XR to enable themselves. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we’re speaking with Ferhan Ozkan, the co-founder of XR Bootcamp, a platform to teach professionals how to create VR and AR applications, and support companies to bridge their skills gap in XR development through an intensive onsite program, cutting edge curriculum, and industry renowned lecturers with a focus on industry portfolio projects. I am personally very, very honored to be on the advisory board of XR Bootcamp and helping them really develop the future of how organizations will train their staff on how to build XR technologies. And so with that, I’d love to welcome Ferhan to the show. Ferhan, welcome to the show, my friend. Ferhan: Hi, Alan. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting. Alan: It’s absolutely my pleasure. I just want to give you a little bit of history about you. XR Bootcamp started from VR First, which was an organization bringing VR labs into universities and colleges around the world. Is that correct? Ferhan: Yes. Yes. Back then — almost four years ago — we started as VR First. The main mission was to democratize VR and AR around the world. And you also supported us on these times, because it was hard to find headsets as a developer, as a startup. And we actually tried to tackle this problem with the help of major headset manufacturers – Oculus, HTC, Leap Motion, Intel — and they supported us to create VR/AR labs around the world. And we are quite happy with the impact being created now, these labs are actually really become big and creating amazing projects. And we are actually proud to have this network and enable this network. Yeah, we are now actually around 800 university that we can reach and over 400 startup clusters. But as a lab that we have supported and seeded — as in equipment and other support — we reach to almost 52 labs. And now we see that these labs become actually quite impactful in their own region to create a regional VR/AR development scene, and VR/AR startup and clusters, and they are even creating VR/AR programs — academic programs — and industrial based trainings. Alan: Ferhan, when did you guys realize that bringing this type of knowledge into the enterprise was the next step? Ferhan: It is quite interesting, because we talk with institutions not only in educational, but government institutions. They reach to us after hearing about VR/AR. “Can we educate the people in our health institutions? Can we train the people, the employees that is actually working in the– airport workers, like on the aviation industry?” And we understood that there is actually already an initiative happening on different parts of the world, on different industries based on each government’s or each region’s industry focus. And then we decided, “OK, what we can do first of all to start the VR/AR innovation in each key destination?” So as I mentioned, seeding the equipment was the first one. I remember in the beginning of 2017, we had some kind of survey, and unfortunately for every 51 developer, there was only one headset in any institution or in a startup cluster. So think of like you want to create something, but you cannot even access the VR headset, which is a shame for this region. So we first of all started this seed equipment program, and then training programs come afterwards. And the biggest supporters or beneficiaries were actually the

Today's guest, location-based VR expert Bob Cooney, has been in the XR space since the early 1990s. He drops by the show to give Alan an update on all the newest tech advances he saw at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo, and explains how today is the most exciting time to be working in this industry. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is always on the bleeding edge of technology. He’s able to predict both tech and business trends. Bob Cooney is widely considered one of the world’s foremost experts on location based virtual reality, and the author of the book “Real Money from Virtual Reality.” I’m really super excited to introduce my good friend and colleague, Bob Cooney to the show. Welcome, Bob. Bob: Oh, dude, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. It’s been a long time coming, this interview. But we’re here. We’re excited. And we just are coming off the heels of *the* major North American show, IAAPA — which for those of you listening and you haven’t been there — it’s basically Disney World for VR, AR, and out-of-home experiences. You were there. Let’s talk about what you saw, and what are the trends coming in out-of-home entertainment. Bob: Yeah, it’s an amazing show. I’ve been going this– I think this is my 27th IAAPA or something like that. And my first one was 1991. And over the last four or five years we’ve seen VR every year just grow in not only the number of companies bringing VR/AR solutions into the market — mostly VR at this point — but the quality is every year measurably increasing. And that’s the thing I think that has me so excited is three or four years ago there was just a literally handful of things that you would even remotely consider as an operator. And last year there was confusion now, because there was– you were starting to see a lot of good stuff and this year it was just overwhelming. And so, yeah, we’ve seen real quality come into the market. Alan: You’ve seen pretty much everything there is out there. What’s one thing that blew your mind this year? Bob: Good question. The rise of unattended virtual reality systems. There was a company called LAI Games, which has been around for decades. They’re based out of Asia. They build arcade games. And a couple of years ago, they took a license from Ubisoft: Raving Rabbids, which is a really popular IP. They merged it with a D-Box motion base and they created a VR ride for family entertainment centers, arcades, and theme parks. It’s a two player ride. It was fairly cost effective, but they recommended it be operated without an attendant, and it was the first VR attraction that came out where you didn’t need to staff it. And the profitability of that really made a big difference for operators. And now this year there was another company called VRsenal, that had an arcade game cabinet with– that was a VR based that was unattended, and it was running Beat Saber, which is obviously one of the most popular games out there. And so we’re starting to see companies realize that maybe we don’t need attendants. Maybe people are smarter than we give them credit for. Maybe they can figure out how to put a headset on their face. Maybe they will clean it by themselves if they care about that. And so I talk about a lot about the four-minute mile, once it was broken. People thought was impossible, people thought if you try to run a four-minute mile, you would die. And once it was proven that it could be done, hundreds of people have done

Verizon's XR development lead, TJ Vitolo, dreams of a day where he can download an entire TV series in an instant, or visualize info about the entire world with AR glasses, even living in a connectivity dead zone by the beach. In his position, he's able to work to make that dream a forthcoming reality by developing the technology that will make 5G possible. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, I’ve got an amazing guest, TJ Vitolo. He is the director and head of XR Technology Development at Verizon. Today, he leads the commercial strategy and product execution behind Verizon’s VR, AR and 360 organization environment. Recently, TJ and his team launched AR Designer, the world’s first streaming-based AR tool kit that allows brands and developers to quickly and easily create augmented reality experiences, with no technical expertise. You can visit Verizon.com or envrmnt.com. I want to welcome TJ to the show. Welcome. TJ: Hey, thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure. I’m so excited to have you on the show. This is like– all the things you guys are doing, from working with the accessibility team at Cornell Tech, to your acquisition of Riot, to working with the Sacramento Kings, Yahoo! News. There is so much going on at Verizon. You want to just give us a high level summary of what you do, and what the plan is at Verizon for introducing 5G and XR? TJ: It’s quite dynamic here. You know, the VR space is ever evolving. Teams that do a number of things within VR here. But specifically you mentioned Riot. Between our team and Riot, we manage both of the content and creative end of XR, and that’s Riot. And our team manages the technical– technology side of virtual reality. So really, my team is focused on building tools and enablers, systems, platforms on the 5G network, sort of the underlying side of XR, to help accelerate and grow the adoption of the technology. On the other side, Riot’s all about the product and the creative storytelling around VR, which really brings these things to life for people. Alan: So you’ve got both the technical side and then the creative. And this is something that I’ve been harping on with customers as well, and just the industry at large: that this industry is no longer about just making products. And you look at the VC investments and they’re investing in platforms and products, but you still need people to create the content. And I think you guys have found that balance with Riot. What do you see as kind of the future of how we create this content, is it going to be user generated versus studio content, or a mixture of both? TJ: It’s going to be a mixture of both. User generation is quite difficult today. One of the products you mentioned, we launched was AR Designer. And really the foundation for that was to put the power of augmented reality and virtual reality into the hands of even the most common user of technology. We built this platform initially with the mindset that schoolteachers– and not by any means that they’re simpletons, but the fact of the matter is they’re teaching students, young children, and they’ve got to have a very effective way to do that, efficient way to do that. And so when we were building this tool, we baseline on children as the audience, schoolteachers as the user of the tool, to produce something that’s really effective. So I think you’re going to see as VR/AR becomes more ubiquitous, access is going to be much greater, and more in the hands of users. At the end of the day, there’s always go

Macy's has been in the news a lot this week, and many are worried about what the latest round of store closures mean for the long-running retailer, and the future of in-person shopping in general. But Macy's resident XR guru Mohamed Rajani came by our podcast a little while back to suggest that the future of retail exists in the virtual world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Mohamed Rajani, responsible for VR and AR initiatives at Macy’s. Mohamed is part of the new Business Development and Innovation team at Macy’s, and is responsible for driving change through the development of new retail concepts and partnerships amidst an evolving retail landscape. “Mo” also leads Macy’s immersive technology initiatives, including VR and AR in furniture, which is removing key friction points for the customer, enabling an AR view in-room capabilities on the Macy’s mobile app. To learn more about the work he’s doing, you can visit macys.com. Mohamed, welcome to the show. Mohamed: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Alan. Happy to be here. Alan: We had the opportunity to to have a few calls prior to Augmented World Expo. We were on a panel together, and you were talking about the amazing work that you’re doing at Macy’s. So let’s start unpacking that. Mo, tell us about what you guys are doing at Macy’s. Mohamed: So just a little bit of context that our team does. Our team’s about two and half years old. I’ve been with the company for over eight years, across a variety of different functions. But about two and a half years ago, as a company, we decided to establish a dedicated team that’s purely focused on what’s new, what’s next. That’s focused on the emerging consumer landscape, the emerging technology landscape, and making sure that the Macy’s brand continues to be relevant not only today, but 10, 20, 30 years from now. So as a team, we’re purely focused on looking at new business models, new concepts, emerging technologies, but then really tying those to our strategic businesses. We want to make sure that any new innovation that we bring into the organization has a lasting impact. But more importantly, a meaningful impact that is actually moving the needle. So if we think about from that context of how we ended up playing in virtual reality and augmented reality, in our business we have a strategic business fillers, and furniture is one of them. It is a business that is high touch, a high margin business, so it’s margin accretive, more profitable to the company, and it’s destination business for us. We’re top of mind for the customer when they’re thinking about furniture. And if you’ve had any experience in buying furniture, it is not a very easy process. It’s one of the few businesses that’s still overwhelmingly physical purchases. More business happens in-store than online, and by a higher margin. And part of it is just the friction involved in it. You don’t know how it’s going to look, how it’s going to fit. And it’s a business that we, as a company, need to fortify. It’s a business that if we want to remain relevant for the next five, 20 years, we want to make sure that we’re not only fortifying the business, but growing and capturing market share. So is that context, whereas we came across emerging technologies as part of our job, we were navigating the landscape and looking at what’s coming out. This was 2016, into 2017. We started seeing virtual reality technologies, especially in the furniture space, and we started exploring and we wanted to make sure that there was a practical a

Upskilling things like floor management or assembly time, that’s easy in XR. But soft skills, like understanding and empathy? A bit more challenging — but importantly, not impossible. Cortney Harding talks with Alan about how emerging tech, like VR and 360 video, can help us all be a little kinder to one another. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we’re speaking with Cortney Harding, founder and CEO of Friends with Holograms, about their full service VR and AR agency, that focuses on soft skills training and best practices for creating powerful content that delivers results. All that and more on the XR for Business Podcast.Welcome to the show, Cortney. Cortney: Oh, thanks for having me. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I’m so excited to have you on the show. You guys have done some incredible things and you’ve been a pioneer in this industry for quite some time. But I’ll let you talk to everybody about how you got into this and where you are now and where you’re going. Cortney: Yeah, great. So I got into VR about almost five years ago now, which is crazy to think about. I have a background in the music business and specifically I was a journalist.I wrote for Billboard. I was an editor there for quite a while. I then went into the music tech space right around the time Spotify launched in the US. It was a great music and tech ecosystem. Alan: You and I have a very similar background. Cortney: Oh, funny. Alan: I was a DJ for 20 years and then created the Emulator, the DJ touchscreen. Cortney: Oh, cool. Alan: Yeah. And then I got into VR. I was like, “What?” Go on. I didn’t mean to cut you off. I was like, “Wow, this is great.” Cortney: No, it’s great. Yeah. So anyway, so I did music tech stuff for several years. I was– I lead business development, and strategy, and partnerships for a couple different startups. And then I saw this VR piece at an art museum about five years ago, and it really broke something open for me. And I was fascinated by it. So I spent about a year — I was still on contract with a music tech company — and I was still writing at the time. So I wrote about VR, I learned about VR, I met a lot of people. And in 2016, at South by Southwest, I did a panel on music and virtual reality. And one of my other panelists was this guy, Kevin Cornish, who’s starting a VR production company, he’s a VR director. And he and I had a really nice conversation, we hit it off. And I joined his VR production company, leading business development strategy. I worked there for about a year and a half. I learned a tremendous amount. It was a very, very intense experience and a very gratifying one.And then I split off to do my own thing. And so Friends With Holograms has been around for about two years now, sort of in its current incarnation. And in those couple of years, we’ve done a lot of different projects, which I’m really proud of. Sort of our our best known project is the Accenture Avenues Project. So we worked on that with Accenture. And the backstory behind that is pretty fascinating. So Accenture came to us, I believe, right about two years ago now, right when we’re first starting and said “We have this idea, we want to do this really amazing social work training project. And would you like to bid for it?” And we, of course, said yes. So we bid for it and we were awarded it in the spring of last year. And then everything kind of went quiet for a while. And we were working on some other projects. And I just kind of in the back

The average concert is a tour de force for one’s sense of sound (and, if the bass is decent, one’s sense of their bones vibrating). But Anne McKinnon from The Boolean isn’t interested in “average” concerts. She wants to use XR to make concerts a sensation for all the senses. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Anne McKinnon from The Boolean. Anne is a VR and AR consultant and writer. She is an editor and contributor to Charlie Fink’s book “Convergence.” Charlie, as you may remember, was one of the very first episodes we had. Her consulting bridges the gap between entertainment and technology. As an advisor, Anne grows and curates a community of digital artists to leverage new and emerging technologies. Anne is actively engaged in the entertainment industry at the intersection of music, arts, gaming, and tech. You can learn more about the great work that Anne and her team are doing at theboolean.io. Anne, welcome to the show. Anne: Thank you, Alan. I’m really excited to speak with you today, and also cannot wait to speak to a lot of the listeners. Alan: Yes, it’s been a while. We’ve known each other quite some time, and you do some work with VR Days and they’ve been on the show as well. And it feels like a family, like a network of people that are all just kind of coming together. So how did you get into this crazy world of technology? Anne: Actually, VR Days was one of the major events I went to and I started working in tech. And it was as a blogger and just kind of looking at how can we solve problems in VR, what can we use it for, and how can we make improvements to every aspect of our lives? And VR Days was one of the best conferences that bridged the gap between technology and arts, and also brought together everyone from military to education to healthcare, and also the creatives to drive that innovation. So that way, I guess I met some of the teams that I work with now and we’re looking at how to solve all these problems and to bring it to audiences around the world. Alan: Let’s unpack that. What are some of the problems that you’re working on solving? Anne: I want you talk a lot today about one of the projects we’re working on for almost two years, and that’s with Miro Shot. So Miro Shot is a band and we’re touring a virtual reality live concert around the world. So to kind of put in detail about what that looks like, is that the audience is physically present and the band as also physically present. And when the audience enters, they have VR headsets on and they are immersed in dreamscape visuals, and the pass-through camera’s a big part of what we do to connect the realities, and to experience music in a new way. And one of the problems that a lot of VR experiences have is how do you reach audiences around the world with live performance, and also how do you reach a large scale audience? A lot of what we’re focusing in business is how do you grow experiences from live to at home. And this is something we’re doing with the band, with up to 30 people at a time for live concert. Alan: People simultaneously in VR? Anne: Simultaneously in VR. So a lot of it is based around the concepts of gaming. So we’re really looking at VR as something that’s not contained, taking from classical genres, from theater and cinema and gaming. So everything starts in a gaming lobby. And they start the experience together and depending on where they look, they’ll be able to experience different parts of the world of the music. And they’re also because of the live perf

Regular listeners will know that podcast host Alan Smithson is no stranger to the conference circuit, and is often asked to present or speak at the big XR expos. In a special episode of XR for Business, you’ll get to hear Alan in his element, as we present his opening remarks at this year’s VRX Conference. “Well, thank you guys for joining. Again, welcome to the Blue Room at VRX 2019. My name’s Alan Smithson, and we’re gonna be talking today about the transformation of education using XR. I want to just quickly talk about MetaVRse. We’re building a platform for future-proof learning. And what that means to us is as more spatial computing technologies come on board, what we want to do is make sure that organizations — from training and enterprise, and also schools and organizations in high schools and universities — all have access to not only the content, but the platforms to let them make their own content. So what we’re building is a platform marketplace for technologies and content to grow. We’re entering into the exponential age of humanity. We’re hitting the point at which all of these technologies converge together. So in the next 10 years, more wealth will be created than all of previous human history. We’re entering into an inflection point, where education systems are going to be stretched beyond our wildest imaginations. Over the next 10 years, more wealth can be created, but right now — currently — we’re building a city the size of Manhattan around the world globally, every single month. Yeah. We’re going to experience massive changes, from environmental changes, to job force changes, to educational changes, all of these changes are happening to us at a pace that we’ve never had before. It’s happening faster and faster. And somebody said this to me the other day. They said “Today is the slowest it will ever be.” It’s terrifying, it’s so fast. But learning is required at every level, whether it’s skilled trades, unskilled trades, whether it is retirees. We’re working on technologies that will make people live to 150 years old. What are they going to do? We need to rethink learning from a ground-up level. All types of learning, whether it’s at work or at school, all of these things that need a complete rethink. Here’s a crazy stat: 75 percent of the global workforce will be millennials by 2023. Who else is terrified by that fact? Right? 120 million people need to be reskill, retrained, and upskilled due to AI and automation in the next three years. We don’t have the systems in place to deal with this. Two trillion dollars, that is the global impact that VR and AR will make over the next 10 years, by 2030. And this is an estimate by PWC. So why is now the perfect time to get into virtual and augmented reality for learning? So over the last three decades we saw the rise of the personal computer and it took 20 years — 30 years, almost — to get everybody onto the personal computer. And then we saw the rise of mobile, and that took about 20 years. XR is going to take about 10 years to go to global mass. So by 2030, we’re gonna be wearing glasses around and those glasses will be inexpensive. They’ll be running on the cloud, so the compute power won’t be on your phone or on your glasses. It’ll be in the cloud, it’ll be all edge computing. So we’re gonna see this massive growth. And right now, we’re past the hype cycle. We’ve already seen proven business use cases. We’re seeing real ROI being driven. And if you look at the compounded annual growth rate of this industry, it’s unprecedented. The only other industry that’s growing as fast is AI. And it perfectly c