Podcasts about amazon choice

Im heutigen Montagsupdate können Host Florian Vette und MOVESELL Marketplace Experte Ole Schleth spannende OTTO-News verkünden: OTTO launcht 7 % MwSt. Kategorien. Ab wann können Nahrungsergänzungsmittel bei OTTO angeboten werden und welche Kategorien folgen als nächstes? Darüber hinaus besprechen Florian und Ole die neu veröffentlichten Geschäftszahlen von OTTO für das Geschäftsjahr 2023/ 2024. Wie hat OTTO sich entwickelt? Wie haben sich einzelne Produktkategorien bei OTTO entwickelt und welchen Ausblick gibt der Bericht? Abschließend geht es um eine neu veröffentlichte Studien, die Amazon Badges im amerikanischen Markt genauer untersucht hat. Wie wirken sich Badges wie Bestseller, Amazon Choice, Climate Pledge Friendly, Amazon Prime und Co. auf die Performance einzelner Produkte aus und wie wichtig sind Badges für Amazon Kunden? Zum OTTO Market Registrierungsformular: https://www.otto.market/de/registrierungsformular.html

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 09:10:04 +0000 https://omt-magazin.podigee.io/9441-neue-episode 70ff6f5ca7ee2ab4a96eaaf5cdfc5f0a ℹ️ Nima Farhad Farzanegan beim OMT ℹ️ OMT-Webinare ℹ️ OMT Konferenz ℹ️ Agency Day 2023 9441 full no

Thanks for listening and if you like the podcast make sure to subscribe!Check out the YouTube Channel as well:https://youtube.com/@AmazonAdsRawDailyMore Infos about the Me & the Podcast can be found here:https://alexanderswade.com/amazon-ads-raw-daily/Follow me on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderswade/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you looking for ways to increase your Amazon conversion rate and maximize your cash flow? It's no secret that the success of any eCommerce business is dependent on boosting the Amazon conversion rate. Yet, it can feel like an uphill battle if you don't know where to start—but guess what: You are NOT alone!  Our expert guest, Mina Elias,has created this checklist full of tricks, tips and strategies designed specifically to help you take charge of your conversions, drive more sales, and make serious money with your Amazon business. By learning how to leverage advertising strategy within Amazon's platform as well optimizing user experience (UX), you will have all the tools needed dump extra cash in your pocket right away. So stop wasting time—let's get started! Time Stamps [02:35] Why does Running Ads Matter? [04:39] Improving Your Click-Through Rate [06:43] The Importance of A Bestseller Badge [08:24] Price and Image Test : Doing A Coupon Test [10:15] Keeping In Mind The Price and The Main Image [14:00] Product Opinion [14:41] Updating Images On A Weekly Basis [15:54] How To Improve Conversion Rate? [17:56] Bullet Points and SEO [19:07] Standout [20:52] Wrapup CTR Optimization to Increase amazon Conversion Rate CTR optimization is crucial when it comes to advertising and sales on Amazon. CTR stands for click-through rate and is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. A higher CTR means more people are clicking on your listing and moving further down the funnel towards a conversion. To maximize CTR, focus on three main areas: the main image, price, and reviews. The Amazon Choice and Bestseller badges can also impact CTR, but the Bestseller badge can only be earned by spending a significant amount of money. Meanwhile, the Choice badge is only useful for your own brand name. Optimizing your pricing, either by yourself or using a service, can also impact CTR. Running coupon tests, either in the form of a dollar amount or percentage off, can drive more conversions. Lastly, tracking your spending and CTR through an excel sheet or software is important to monitor progress and make adjustments. Dropping your price may result in lower profit per unit, but can improve CTR and overall sales. Increase amazon Conversion Rate with Your Main Image The main image of your product plays a crucial role in attracting potential buyers to your listing. To optimize your main image, you can use polling platforms such as Pickfu or Productpinion to gather opinions on which image is more appealing. The results of these polls can help you make changes to the image to make it more eye-catching and increase the CTR. For example, you can incorporate certain elements in the main image to make it stand out, such as the size of the product or its intended use (such as pre and intra workout vs hydration). It's important to remember that the results of these experiments may not be 100% accurate, so it's best to keep testing and adjusting over time to see what works best for your product. Keep in mind that an increase in CTR can lead to a higher ad spend, so it's important to be controlled with your spending. A conversion rate of 2-3% is considered good, but a conversion rate of 4% or higher is considered phenomenal. Conversion Optimization Conversion optimization is a crucial aspect of e-commerce success. The CTR elements, such as the main image and pricing, also impact conversion rates. The rest of the images, questions, and videos play a significant role in converting shoppers into customers. Most sellers first click on the main image, price, and star rating, then look at the images. The images are crucial, and their position matters. Productpinion, a product testing tool, can be used to test the impact of different image positions on sales by asking "Which one would you buy and why?" Testing videos, price, and coupons can also help increase conversion rates. However,

On the Choose 2 Think Inspirational Podcast, we chat about choosing 2 think about your wealth or purpose, your faith, your relationships, AND your health! Health is the name of the game for this episode, part 5 of the Brain Power Series. Daily and regular movement is heart and brain healthy. We're coming on the holidays, and it's getting chilly outside. Let me offer you a list of 14 ways that you can get your groove on and start moving daily to boost your energy and your mood, save time, help you to feel oh so good, and eliminate the STRESS that may have you feeling a bit overwhelmed or down. Now some of these activities you've probably heard of but stay tuned to the end for a special indoor technique I use daily to keep myself moving. Here are a few of the items I mentioned on the show: *Indoor trampoline: https://amzn.to/3Fqkrku *Indoor portable exercycle Amazon Choice: https://amzn.to/3XVdv6a *My husband Jim's standing desk: https://amzn.to/3h3TjhR Cited article: https://positive psychology.com/exercise-neurological-benefits/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/victoria-walker-lydon/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/victoria-walker-lydon/support

The Amazon Choice is a digital badge attributed to Amazon products that dominate a particular search keyword by the rate of purchase. The badge is in the upper left corner of the product feature image, on the app user interface, or beneath the product title on the listing page. Since 2006, Refund Retriever has been auditing FedEx and UPS packages for late deliveries and billing mistakes. We assist shippers in maximizing carrier discounts and achieving best-in-class pricing through a complete logistics analysis. Are you paying too much for your shipping? Refund Retriever also offers a solution to all your Amazon FBA reimbursement problems. We manually check the whole inventory lifecycle to guarantee all inventory is available for sale. To learn more about FedEx/UPS auditing, contract negotiation, or Amazon FBA reimbursement services, visit: https://zurl.co/ZUqV

We know that being at the top of the search results on Amazon is prime real estate for sellers. Good sales and good reviews help get you there, but some sellers are gaming the algorithm themselves with fake reviews.. But how big of a problem is it - and have you been duped?In this Which? Investigation Greg Foot speaks to Which? experts about their recent investigations: setting up a fake company on Facebook Business to find out how much fake reviews cost, discovering that an ‘Amazon Choice' badge is not a badge of approval, and the uncovering of a new type of con that you may have been a victim of - ‘brushing'.Show notes and references are available here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Vinnie talks to the seller of an Amazon FBA business created in July 2014 in the office supply niche. Listen in to find out how the business makes an average of $12,673 per month in net profit, why the seller has decided to sell, the lessons learned from running the business, and much more.   Find more businesses like listing #48627 at empireflippers.com.

Denied from an institution he seriously wanted to get into, Andy’s creative and innovative mind directs him into the creation of CRYPTO CARTEL, a perfect tabletop game that practices strategy.   Today’s episode of the Knucklehead Podcast is a comeback interview with Andy Mazeika. From a budding entrepreneur, his product is now labeled as Amazon’s Choice and setting up a great avenue for family entertainment. His entrepreneurial spirit leads him not only in the genesis of the Crypto Cartel Card Game but also looking to get Crypto Cartel Comic Series with comic book artist Manuel Martinez.    ANDY MAZEIKA is the designer of Crypto Cartel. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Iraq War Combat Veteran.    CRYPTO CARTEL is a Card Game where players must establish resources in order to exchange them for Cryptocurrency -- or Crypto. During exchanges, players may also earn Silk Road Cards, which can give you the opportunity to descend upon your opponents and their resources or to defend yourself from any attacks. Enjoy! Favorite Quote:   “This is why I did this game ultimately, to begin with, is because I didn’t get into USC. I applied twice, didn’t get in. One of the things I’ve learned along the way if you want to create something, you really need that entrepreneurial spirit, to build something, to get things together, to keep it going, cause you want it to be self-sustaining.”         -Andy Mazeika In this Episode   5:52 - How Andy prepared a master plan for his business   9:41 -  What separates Crypto Cartel in the marketplace    13:00 - A few minor things to expect in the game   16:09 - How he reacts to critical feedbacks   16:55 - The story behind the creation of Crypto Cartel   21:58 - The demographic of the people enjoying this game   26:48 - What makes Crypto Cartel  an "Amazon Choice" label   33:50 - His words of advice for those who are getting into a business Getting in touch with Andy Mazeika   Website    Kickstarter   Email   Facebook   Instagram   Twitter Resources:   Game at Amazon    Gameplay Music   Connect with Knucklehead Media Group   Website Facebook   Knucklehead Media Group is your “push button” for podcasts. We help companies and organizations tell their story using podcasts and best practices for content distribution. Home to some of the top podcasts across multiple categories, captivating coursework on gaining traction with your show, and consulting to those companies BOLD enough to get some wins. We believe your mistakes set the foundation for your success, those stories help customers beat a pathway to your doorstep, and the myths from bringing business online shouldn't hold you back from getting yours.    Click here to more episodes of the Knucklehead Podcast

Este es el motivo por el que se compran reviews. ¿Qué verás en este Vídeo Podcast? Comentamos un caso real de un producto que debería estar destrozado por las reviews y sin embargo es Amazon Choice. Te cuento todos los detalles en este videopodcast Te dejo el curso aquí: https://victorgbarco.com/curso-amazon-online/ Código de descuento: aquiteayudamos Nuestra Agencia Especializada en Marketplaces: - En Alicante: https://avafaconsulting.com/ - En México: https://avafaconsulting.com.mx/ Nuestro Canal de Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtQoNz-GSZ14sdGPWgpKYsw Mi Web de Consultor Especialista en Amazon: https://www.victorgbarco.com/ Mi Web de Consultor SEO en Valladolid y Alicante: https://victorgb.com/

I got to interview Shannon Roddy. Shannon Roddy is an Amazon eCommerce consultant and the founder of Marketplace Seller Courses; online courses, resources and tools for Brands selling on Amazon. Using his honed strategy he's helped clients achieve over 23 #1 New releases, 29 Amazon Choice products and 4 #1 Best sellers. He has over 7 years of experience in the eCommerce space and enjoys providing a high level of 1-to-1 services for his clients. We spoke about: How he got into the ecommerce space and his journey along the way. What motivates him to succeed. Weaknesses he's turned into strengths. Advice he has for the audience. And much more. This episode is brought to you by Nova Zora Digital. See what Nova Zora Digital can do for your business with digital marketing. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Oil and in turn gas prices which were expected to be headed higher now, are in fact  lower. AAA reports as we move into the Labor Day holiday period, gas prices will average .30 cents less per gallon than one year ago. Traffic will be the problem this Labor Day holiday.  Also, electric vehicle purchases are a small part of the market but enough people are buying to affect the demand equation for gasoline, and that is helping to moderate prices. There will still be ups and downs based on temporary factors, but the trends for low gas prices are positive. A 3 year investigation resulted in a federal bust. Be on your guard for the techniques these scammers used – this won’t be the last criminal ring employing them. The number one scheme here: online romance scams - an active fraud method for at least 15 years. This time, the fraudsters were pretending to be U.S. military personnel.  No matter how much you may have fallen for someone online, don’t believe the story until you’re face-to-face and know who you’re dealing with. Criminals exploit the military or anything else to exploit your affection as a gateway to your wallet. A WSJ investigation has found unsafe and counterfeit sales on Amazon.  Their intense digging uncovered safety issues. Most Amazon sellers are third party, much like online marketplace eBay. Amazon muddies the waters by including many 3rd party items as Amazon Choice or Prime. Some kids’ toys contained led, and counterfeits were found. There’s hazard for adults as well such as counterfeit motorcycle helmets. Amazon is selling items that have been banned, including mats that are a suffocation danger to children. 4 out of 10 Amazon Choice kids’ items failed federal safety standards. Amazon sells 3 different ways: Listing for a third party, fulfilling for a third party and direct selling by Amazon themselves which they control. It’s hard to tell.  Amazon has a broken system right now. Don’t allow yourself to be harmed. Follow the steps to identify the actual seller. Important: Amazon does NOT stand behind anything sold on its site that is NOT sourced by them. eBay – also a listing service, is more customer friendly to buyers. Know that Amazon is not necessarily a safe place to purchase until they clean up their act. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we talk about the emotional side of customer service with long-time colleague, Shannon Roddy.   We discuss customer service through the lens of some of the best companies in the world, like Zappos and Southwest Airlines.   Shannon gives tips about how hiring the right staff with positive and empathetic attitudes can play a key role in connecting with your customers.   Shannon is the founder of Marketplace Seller Courses, online courses, resources and tools for Brands selling on Amazon. Shannon has worked with over 85 brands, manufacturers and private labels to set up, optimize and launch their products on Amazon. The course was built on seven years of Amazon consulting knowledge that helped launch over 23 #1 New Releases, four #1 Best Sellers and 29 Amazon Choice products. Show notes: www.sellersmile.com/017 Want to support the show?! >>> Leave us a review and rating in iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts! Please and thank you.

Coinbase says all your bitcoin base are belong to us, Apple sues a “virtualization” company, was Amazon offering vendors a pay to play scheme with Amazon Choice, and, as always, the weekend longreads suggestions.Sponsors:Metalab.coMacStadium.com/ridehomeLinks:Exclusive: Coinbase Buys Xapo Custody for $55 Million, Eyes Lending Business (Fortune)Apple Files Lawsuit Against Virtualization Company Corellium for Illegally Replicating iOS and Apple Apps (MacRumors)Amazon offered vendors ‘Amazon’s Choice’ labels in return for ad spending and lower prices (Digiday)YouTube shuts down music companies' use of manual copyright claims to steal creator revenue (TechCrunch)Weekend Longreads Suggestions:Weird gadgets that are actually really useful (ZDNet)Trump Tumult Has Gadget Giants Splitting Along U.S.-China Lines (Bloomberg)THREE YEARS OF MISERY INSIDE GOOGLE, THE HAPPIEST COMPANY IN TECH (Wired)WEWORK ISN’T A TECH COMPANY; IT’S A SOAP OPERA (The Verge)WeWTF (ProfGalloway.com)Elon Musk’s Neuralink: Both an evolution and a plan for radical change (Ars Technica)SpaceX’s First Astronauts Train Up for Space, but Crew Dragon Faces Delays (Inverse.com)HOW A 'NULL' LICENSE PLATE LANDED ONE HACKER IN TICKET HELL (Wired)

GBP Latest: Strong Wage & Employment Data Provides Support, but Expect Any Strength to be Limited The latest UK labour market data has beaten expectations, and should provide Sterling with some short-term support but we remain of the view any strength in the currency should ultimately remain limited in nature. According to the ONS, Average Earnings - excluding bonuses - read at 3.9% in June, ahead of economist forecasts for a reading of 3.8% and the previous month's reading of 3.6%. This is an 11-year high. The Average Earnings Index - with bonuses included - for June read at 3.7%, in line with economist forecasts but above the previous month's 3.5% which was itself revised higher. And, the better-than-expected numbers extended to the employment statistics where it was shown the UK workforce grew 115K on a the three-month-on-three-month basis in June, markets had only expected growth of 65K. "While much of that was part-time employment, it is encouraging that firms have retained their workers, suggesting they expect activity to pick up again following the Brexit hangover in Q2," says Andrew Wishart, UK Economist with Capital Economics. The UK unemployment rate nudged up unexpectedly to 3.9% in (the three months) to June. Consensushad been for a steady rate of 3.8% for the fourth consecutive month. When it comes to currency markets, deviation from expectations move a currency, and the best on expectations should therefore be supportive of Sterling. We are seeing some gains in the Pound following the release, with the Pound-to-Euro exchange rate trading at 1.0785, the day's low is at 1.0756. The Pound-to-Dollar exchange rate trading at 1.2067, the day's low is at 1.2042. The Pound Advances on Reports 'Remainer' MPs Have Options to Block 'No Deal' Brexit - GBP/EUR @ 1.0786 +0.56% | GBP/USD @ 1.2098 +0.64% - MPs said to be working on credible route to preventing 'no deal' Brexit - Sterling seen higher in Monday trade - But gains tipped to be short lived - However, IfG says ability of Parliament to block 'no deal' effectively not possible Pound Sterling went higher on Monday in a move that coincides with fresh reports that there are in fact still credible routes that can be explored by MPs wishing to prevent a 'no deal' Brexit. Sterling has been under pressure over recent days and weeks as it became increasingly clear that Prime Minister Boris Johnson could deliver a 'no deal' Brexit if he truly desired such an outcome, and all indications thus far in his young premiership suggest he is intent on doing so. From a currency perspective, it is therefore likely that any suggestions that MPs do in fact still have options to thwart the Prime Minister's intentions would potentially prove supportive to Sterling. "There were some developments on that over the weekend which could suggest some upside risk for the Pound," says Fritz Louw, a Currency Analyst with MUFG. Louw references a report in the Times that says "MPs are drawing up plans to compel Boris Johnson to break his “do or die” pledge and force him to request an 11th-hour Brexit extension from the European Union." According to the report, MPs would look to bring down the Government in a no-confidence vote. However, instead of forming a new administration in the 14 days stipulated by the Fixed Parliament Act, MPs will try introduce new legislation. This legislation will state that the Government must ask for a Brexit extension before calling a mandatory General Election. After all, if no alternative government is formed within 14 days, a General Election must be held. This document has reportedly been discussed with Labour leadership and it has also been signed off by Dominic Grieve and circulated among 300 MPs who support a second referendum. “It would be counterproductive to spell out the precise mechanism(s) through which this might be achieved, but we must be clear about the principle — a general election must not be used as a dev...

In this day and age no one wants to be sold to. They want to make up their own mind without being pressured. I was listening to a podcast the other day called Brand Builder where Dave Gerhardt VP of Marketing at Drift shares some huge knowledge bombs. He said that according to Harvard Business Review 75% of B2B gather all of their information before even going to your website. That’s pretty phenomenal if you think about it.Information is free. It’s everywhere. Case in point with this podcast. The power lies in the consumer not the company. The consumer makes up their mind who they want to do business with, buy from, partner with. They do all this on their own thanks to the information superhighway. They don’t even have to ask a person necessarily a question. We’ve got bots for that now.The world of marketing is changing.We have to think differently at how we market to our audience. We can’t just sell at them anymore; we have to draw them in, in a new way; a more subtle way. This is how we stack the deck to get people paying attention to us.My challenge for you this episode is to record your brand. What emotions or actions does your brand evoke? For example, say you are a motivational speaker? Try recording motivational music that speaks to you, sounds of footsteps going up to the podium, clapping, room noise. Listen to this over and over again until actual explainer words come to mind like “leadership”, “optimistic”, “passionate”...things like that. From there, start a mood board. Find actual images that represent those sounds as well as words. I believe that after taking an actual moment to sit in this, you’ll have a clearer idea of what your sound should be. Even if it’s not melodic, because sonic branding is not just melodic (remember the Aflac duck?), you’ll at least be able to rule out what does not sound like your brand. That in itself is a huge step.Here’s a link to a palm-size voice recorder I found on Amazon https://amzn.to/2Ks1keB. It’s easy to carry around and easy to upload audio to another source when you’re ready to fit all the pieces together. I haven’t used this yet but it was an Amazon Choice product and a pretty good deal. It’s also something that I’ve been shopping for a potential client so if you do get it, I’d love to hear what you think.Then when you’re ready, come to me. I’d love to help! And anyone like me, if you come to them with all this forethought, creating your sound will be that much smoother of a process and potentially a lot faster. And the best part, this will truly be of your brand. Remember, us sonic branders can only go as far as you let us in. If you have done no due diligence on what you truly want before we start designing, then the sound will be more our creation than yours. Sometimes that’s what someone wants, but I’d rather it come from your heart not mine.I want this podcast to give you the information you need to create a successful sonic brand identity. As you join me on this journey, I hope that you’ll reach out and tell me what you find interesting, things you’d love for me to expand upon, things that flat out confuse you or you have no idea how to even begin comprehending. This voice accessible world is new to a lot of us and it’s outlets are growing each and every day. It’s new and ever changing. That’s why I’m here. To help bridge that gap between traditional marketing and this whole new way of thinking.I hope you enjoyed this episode. Don’t forget to subscribe, follow, add to your library, and share with a friend. Have you read an interesting article lately, do you have any questions, do you have a really off ball event that you heard about that you want to send my way? Please share! You can find me at www.dreamrproductions.com, Linkedin, FaceBook or you can email me at jeanna@dreamrproductions.com. I want this podcast to be a collaborative event. I want it to be of benefit to us all so stop by and say hello. Let’s make this world of Sound more intriguing, more unique, and more and more on brand.Site Sourceshttps://ignitevisibility.com/7-examples-effective-subliminal-advertising/https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ads-with-subliminal-messageshttps://open.spotify.com/episode/63hSawC3t6StMMo8WtmbV9?si=JJ-__ibHRg-AfTuVsO4jIwhttps://www.goodbeerhunting.com/sightlines/2019/2/7/whisper-campaign-michelob-ultra-pure-gold-is-trying-to-make-you-tinglehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXmlN9BAddgThis podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, and Podbean. Coming soon to iHeart Radio.

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Vediamo cos’è Amazon Choice, come funziona e come ottenerlo per i prodotti che vediamo su Amazon in modo da aumentare il proprio fatturato e guadagnare di più.Impara a vendere su Amazon, iscriviti al nostro Gruppo di formazione GRATUITO:►https://www.scuolaecommerce.com/gruppo-amazon/ Scarica gli Ebook Gratuiti di SCUOLAECOMMERCE.COM ►https://www.scuolaecommerce.com/ebook-amazon-gratis/ ----------------------------------------­-------------------ScuolaEcommerce.com è la prima scuola online che ti insegna a progettare, realizzare e sviluppare il tuo E-commerce. Aumenta le tue vendite online grazie ai nostri consigli. ► Impara a realizzare un E-commerce di Successo grazie alle nostre guide: https://www.scuolaecommerce.com/ ----------------------------------------­-------------------

Vediamo cos’è Amazon Choice, come funziona e come ottenerlo per i prodotti che vediamo su Amazon in modo da aumentare il proprio fatturato e guadagnare di più.Impara a vendere su Amazon, iscriviti al nostro Gruppo di formazione GRATUITO:►https://www.scuolaecommerce.com/gruppo-amazon/ Scarica gli Ebook Gratuiti di SCUOLAECOMMERCE.COM ►https://www.scuolaecommerce.com/ebook-amazon-gratis/ ----------------------------------------­-------------------ScuolaEcommerce.com è la prima scuola online che ti insegna a progettare, realizzare e sviluppare il tuo E-commerce. Aumenta le tue vendite online grazie ai nostri consigli. ► Impara a realizzare un E-commerce di Successo grazie alle nostre guide: https://www.scuolaecommerce.com/ ----------------------------------------­-------------------

Amazon Choice Badge - FBA Seller #149

In this episode we bring back Kevin King to chat Amazon Choice, the Best Sellers Badge and Category optimisation to ensure visibility and relevance.

  EP115 - Amazon Q4 2017 Earnings Hot Take This episode is a hot take of the Amazon Q4 2017 earnings Amazon Q4 2017 Earnings $60B Revenue =~ $129B GMV ($47B 1P + $82B 3P) New Amazon A+ Content Options Amazon, JPMorgan Chase Health Care Project Supreme Court to hear South Dakota sales tax collection case UPS - Amazon Problem eBay - PayPal breakup Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 115 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, February 1st 2018. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 115 being recorded on Thursday February 1st 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual are you with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott Sugar Sisters. Well Jason her here we are on the first day of February 2018 is zipping by and today was interesting because it's kind of like the Super Bowl of two companies. Well yesterday we had eBay in Facebook announced and then today we have the Three A's Amazon alphabet / Google, and Apple so a lot of news coming out of those results and the all these companies are announcing how their fourth quarter of 2017 went which is. Exciting in the world of retail cuz that's the, the biggest quarter so tonight we're going to really focus in on Amazon on this episode and I were to have a hot take on some of the dialysis of their fourth quarter 2017 results and then at the end we have some time we are going to hit a couple other highlights of some of the other quarterly announcements. So long tail lizards know this but it's always important to refresh Aaron's memory when you look at these different results it's important kind of think about the Baseline out there and as an industry were growing looks like. The holiday Ecommerce came in at 16 dating percent retail came in at like 4% Jason is that kind of what it's been. Jason: [1:54] Yep yep maybe even a little higher like for 4.5%. Scot: [1:57] Go to those are those are kind of the benchmarks and you know I think the the the way I view the world is, if you're going faster than those are gaining sure if you're growing slower you're losing sure if you're not growing you're. You're pretty much toast to the role of e-commerce in retail so let's start outside with some big picture things so Jason I thought for you first we talked a lot about. Conversational Commerce and all. Echo ecosystem and this is this is probably the most strong bases code I've ever seen in any of Amazon's quarterly press releases for the last 20 years, read it in its entirety so Bezos said quote our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic and we far exceeded them, we don't see positive surprises of this magnitude very often expect us to double down so that was pretty interesting and kind of like a, you know if you have to read that while you look at that picture of Jeff Bezos where he was like you seen the me where he was like super geeky on one side now he's all ripped, so you have to you have to imagine the rips of Jeff Bezos list of some kind of saying that one they sold tens of millions of Echoes In the. [3:12] Precious is the issue is not over 50 bullets I would say a good quarter of them were around Echo. [3:21] Anything you want to add around Echo. Jason: [3:23] Yeah it wasn't just funny because I remember it wasn't very long ago maybe even 2 years ago. Echo was just trying to get some traction and I think you mentioned to a reporter that you thought that it potentially could be the next billion-dollar business from Amazon and that was a, shocking surprising prediction that the people were asking you to back up and you know. [3:48] Tens of millions of of a echo devices get you pretty close to there. Scot: [3:54] Yeah yeah yeah yeah if we assume so I guess the lowest you spend is like 40. Four. And then you're the most you can spend is like 150 so I imagine the average is a hundred bucks. Jason: [4:10] That would even sending it a hundred bucks each either so that's that. [4:17] Exactly so as per usual you you were right and then you know I think it's one of the scariest as I keep seeing about this is. What you did now the top two selling products on Amazon. Like are that that Echo. And the fire stick. Scot: [4:33] Yeah and since we're on the topic over on the Google side they were asked when they're going to start monetizing it and they're CR sudar. Which I think is how you say he said that they're really just focused on the user experience and nailing that and monetization is very far away so that was interesting that you know that date. Why do people read that quote is in committing their little bit behind and they can't really worry about monetizing until they catch up with where Alexa / Echo are. [5:03] Cool so continue with the big picture Amazon's total revenue in another footnote is if he heard me say some numbers that may be a little bit out of line with what you read and special leases or are seen in the news. I always take the voice two sets of Amazon numbers there's the ones that are just the wrong numbers and then there's the ones that taken to the consideration, the effects of foreign currencies in Wall Street sign that's XFX set of the excluding the foreign exchange changes so if a British pound oscillates 20 or 30%. That will just your earnings so if you strip that out it kind of is more apples to apples so I was going with the Apples to Apples numbers so that being said Amazon's revenue accelerated in the fourth quarter 36%. [5:48] And that's up from a 34% growth rate in Q3 and they came in with a 60.5 billion dollar Revenue number which is not too shabby and you know every. Every quarter public companies tend to give guidance in this was very much at the top of Amazon's guidance Wall Street was expecting. Let's see. [6:11] Yes so this was also above wall Street's expectations are expecting 59.8 and so does exceeded by it looks like .7 which doesn't feel like a big deal but that's like $709 so. That's that's pretty pretty nice beat the key drivers of the quarter were amazon-web-services Wishes the cloud computing and then they have this, tricky category called other Revenue, and moose while shooting let's agree the biggest Chunk in there is ADS so that business we talked about a lot on the show which would include the AWS and AMS and AMG businesses, That Grew that also accelerated growth and it grew 60% versus 58% the last quarter. Amazon had a very high probability and prove pretty dramatically in the quarter Marjorie gross margin sticked up last quarter they were 35.2 and they took up the 36.4 so that's what you would call a hundred basis points kind of move which is. Pretty substantial at these levels on the conference call to see if I owe attributed it to the North America business and Retail doing really well at scale eight of us contributed to that as did he actually caught the ad business is starting to kind of. News the needle on Gross margins here which which I think is pretty interesting because it's actually pretty small I think it's. [7:32] 6 billion annualized so that would be like. Maybe 2 billion at this point in the fourth quarter so it must be just pure margin feel to move the gross margins of the larger 60 billion dollar business. Not any meaningful way enough for the CFO to call it out so a lot of folks are reading the tea leaves there and saying that it that ad business is really starting to. [7:54] Can I show up in ways it hasn't before. [7:58] And hopefully they'll be a day when it gets to be big enough that they have to carve it out like today w x and they crawl curious is really see what's going on inside of their. [8:06] Let's see about that. [8:10] They also made kind of another one of these kind of things you have to parse where they said more new members joined Prime in 2017 than ever before which I think you know when your growing. [8:19] The rate you're going you would assume that's the case. But then most estimates out there Amazon does not disclose the number of prime memberships out there most folks kind of put it in about 60 million us households out of. 250 us households so it really good penetration there some surveys as you go up into the upper upper income levels you get north of 50% penetration and they did say 5 billion items shipped with prime over the year. [8:47] That puts Amazon and I just put that in perspective not even half of Walmart when you look at it this way, so that's interesting but you know Walmart I don't think they've announced yet but they did typically have been growing kind of you know their eCommerce is growing pretty strongly now overall they've been growing low single-digits I I would be surprised if they don't, youngest Walmart comes in above maybe 5% growth All In. [9:17] Doesn't it was a nice surprise is this is the first quarter we're prophets of come in over a billion no you and I talked a lot to people that the number one thing. That you hear when you talk to Executives about Amazon is, oh well she's giving a pastor unprofitable there a money-losing kind of business the only thing inside of their that makes money is the cloud computing etcetera etcetera know those things are true so if you took cloud computing out the whole interview at Amazon still makes money I even if it took ads out I'm sure now it is true that you carve out the retail business that show you a p&l for North America, and international North America is quite profitable and then International is still losing money but that's because they're building enough they're investing like you know, two billion dollars in India there still investing in China they just watch Australia you know there's something going on down in Latin America Brazil so so, it's just because that investing pretty heavily there so. [10:15] Not only did prophets come topically dollars for the first time in a quarter that came in at 1.9 billion this is really big surprise for Wall Street cuz I think they're expecting more like 500 million now it was so that is one time so Amazon did say that about 800 million of that 1.9 billion, I was from the new tax plan that rolled out so they're decrease in the corporate tax rate in United States helped out Amazon pretty immensely. [10:40] But you know what's interesting is you not talked about this but but it really doesn't care about profits which sounds weird and the reason they don't is when you're public company it it's almost impossible to. [10:52] Grow profits in a way that makes sense because of the way accounting treatment happens, yeah your Revenue gets spread out your cost gets spread out and all these things happen so Amazon believes a better measure of how the business is doing is free cash flow and that was 3.3 billion so a lot of cash getting generated Amazon even though they continue to invest in a torrid pace and fulfillment centers in those kinds of things. So that's the big picture Jason you want to look at the retail side. Jason: [11:22] Yeah and I just one sort of thing that I always chuckle about like there's a number of people that feel like, to some extent Amazon manages their Investments to make sure that they don't have a significant profit, inside like under that Siri you can imagine that they were like mildly annoyed at the the tax savings that kind of came in with this big lump profit at the end of the year. Scot: [11:46] Yeah they didn't say that on the cob but it's possible. Jason: [11:52] Inter on the the retail side of the business and we will break this down when you get into the marketplace but from a pure Revenue side North American revenues we're at 37.3 billion for the quarter which is up 42% year-over-year growth so again, you know you can tear that to the the kind of. Ecommerce industry growth at 16% and you know they're they're continuing to eat up a market share at a, a pretty scary place so I can I really only know of one retailer with meaningful volume that's, potentially going faster than then that's that's Walmart and obviously they're growing a much smaller number and cheer Point International grew slower at 22%, and you know that's that someone interesting like obviously they're still in in the early investment stage in a bunch of these markets but the but they're, they're sharing a lot of those markets is much smaller so you know it it's actually easier to grow much faster and so that, to me that that highlights the fact that they still have their work cut out for them to to win and be a meaningful player in some of those big big International markets particularly India that there, they are in a knife fight in. Scot: [13:04] Yep absolutely and then I will be in the marketplace which is where I spend a lot of my time so the way I think about it is if there is a, the pie chart of Amazon or our kind of a diagram, you have AWS and other if you pull those out your left with the retail business and the retail business has two pieces what we call one p which is the traditional wholesale model in 3p which is the marketplace model Amazon is always historically been pretty. [13:31] Kind of Silent about giving details about the marketplace the one the two things I do talk about our unit growth so overall in the entire retail entity unit growth was 23%. Pretty interesting and it makes you kind of say all right if the retail business if you kind of look at the the midpoint of that 42 and 32 the retail this is probably true kind of mid-30s unit growth, you 23% how did they grow mid-thirties, and that's just selling that's an increase in average order value essentially so you know the value per unit that goes through is gone up so everyone gets a lot of nice multipliers in their model up because the scale they're at so how these to talk about. The number of users that requiring that slow down pretty dramatically and but then Revenue itself accelerated that's another indication that the revenue per active user was really. Growing because of prime the other metric they disclosed is they talked about a unit mix between 1 p + 3 P that is now 51%, that's not a high water mark I think she wanted you to as a 51% and Q3 a dip to 50% because of all the echo, Prime Day Day stuff and it came back here to 51% for the holiday quarter so long was long time ago she was the show know that this is, Marketplace peace is really important because you know to really understand the impact of Amazon there's their associate iceberg, and we really only see the tip of the iceberg and that that big kind of mass underneath the water at Amazon is the marketplace so here's how it works on the canal walk you through the mail so if we round numbers they did $60 in Revenue. [15:10] 5 billion of that was eight of us so you take that out and now you have essentially 55 billion in retail there's like a billion or two of ads in there but let's keep, math simple at 55 billion now. [15:23] Well it says 51% of units were three p that doesn't mean that you take that 55 in / 1/2 because the way Amazon a recognizes revenue for each this, pieces of business is different in the 1p world Revenue equals sales so I saw hundred-dollar widget. My road is $100 easy reptile rooms used to doing it but in the 3p World they County Road SE, when a third-party let's say we have I don't know Jason's audio shop and you know he has all this awesome audio equipment he sells $100 mixer on there a Amazon collect $10 as the commission so now what happens is you have the revenue is actually the $10, and the transaction value of the item sold as what we called gmv or gross merchandise value in the world of Market places so you have this kind of. Weird thing that happens where the actual transaction the volume is not Revenue anymore it's a small percentage that Amazon takes his commission or we used were taking it so. [16:23] If you take that 55 billion for the quarter, and when I do my analysis on this about 47 billion of that is first party so that leaves caught, but that 8 billion for third-party is really just the commission rate and. I argued if you want apples to apples this to other retailers you have to gross that back up. Because when someone bought the audio device from Jason store on Amazon vs Best Buy, Best Buy lost $100 even though Amazon only made $10 if that makes sense to the transactional value is the Zero Sum game out in the world of retail, so if we take that 8 billion that's the revenue for third-party, and we assume just going to keep it easy to take rate of 10% you have to effectively * 10 and you get 80 billion so first party was 47 billion and then third party is about 80 billion, so you're by my math when you had this up the total gmv for the quarter would include 1 p + 3 p is 129 billion. [17:32] This is all a very long way of saying essentially Amazon's Choice as big as people think it is and when you look at that context you know if that's what they're doing it accordingly rate. 20 billion multiply that by four you get 480 billion then an Amazon Apples to Apples is as big if not bigger than Walmart at this point we actually look at the transactional implications. So did the other natural question is so if I'm saying 47 billion first party. 80 billion third party this kind of like 1/3 2/3 out of the total why is that unit number 51%, and do you know the number gets very skewed the the bulk of one p units and Amazon her books and digital items they even include like if you bought a 99-cent app on your, you know you're your fire your Kindle kind of device that counts in there so. It seems have a much lower aov compared to 3p so so. But that's the unit mix is 51% but the GMB mcscuse higher towards third party so usually kind of like how to get the ends up being like 62% this year versus 38 on the other side so. [18:46] Now. Other there's other ways to calculate this an Amazon is is gives when they release their quarterly The Q's which is there SEC document state day damn it. The annual one. [18:57] They'll be some numbers in there that give us another view of that and when you look at while she puts out there in the ballpark might my way of doing it tends to come out a little bit high so I'm kind of in the other 129. And I've seen some of the analyst kind of looking more at like the 1:20 so we'll see you don't no matter how you slice it though. Pretty huge Amazon's bigger than people think it is and this whole entity is growing at in a 38 36% year-over-year and they're really just kind of. [19:30] Destroying Shear I'm sure we'll start to see articles coming out where you know I seen Art summer day where they got half of the e-commerce growth but I think it's probably actually be bigger than that and I think they they definitely took up a lot of the overall retail growth when you looking at the scale these numbers. Another last thing is, you're one of my favorite things every year is the Bezos annual letter that doesn't come out until they do their final SEC documents in this works little Insider baseball on your public company you put out this quarterly reports and you do a very quick audit on that, with Auditors to put them out but then when you do your annual and you have to go back and kind of do a forensic audit of the entire year so that'll go on and then usually in the first week of April is when Amazon publishes, their annual numbers to the SEC which will include an annual report and that will have the business letter so we have to wait in Fortune until April to read that. Jason: [20:25] Yep and that definitely will be worth waiting for I mean great great breakdown I know there's a lot of detail there for folks that are newer, that gmv point Scott makes a super important I just like to think of that as that's how much money consumers gave Amazon in exchange for goods or how much of a consumer's wallet Amazon got and so that's why, when you're comparing any other retailer that the really important thing is what share of the consumer spending did Walmart get versus Amazon versus Target or anyone else and so if you're up, a retailer that doesn't have a Marketplace like Target and you say you you sold 50 billion dollars for the quarter. That's how much of the consumers dollars you got 50 billion bucks and then in Amazon case they said they they got. [21:13] 43 billion in Revenue but that actually equals 82 billion of consumer spending and so obviously. [21:21] There they are out there killing it now Walmart also has a Marketplace it's a much smaller percent of their total revenue but so Walmart is another retailer where did you want to look at him really closely you also would try to back into a. GMB number versus Revenue. [21:39] So moving forward Amazon doesn't think they're slowing down either so they they set their their q1 guidance in that. 47.8 billion to 50.8 billion so that would be somewhere between a 34 and 42% year-over-year growth so. [22:03] You know it so middle that's 38% which again growing much faster than the overall industry. Second biggest player in the industries Walmart they are growing even faster than than Amazon in e-commerce at the moment and so when you. You talk about the 16% average there on a heck of a lot of retailers that are growing at 16% and most other e-commerce sites are actually. Doing much worse than that because the two guys at the very top of the echo system are are growing so fast. [22:34] You know it's it's crazy to see the biggest players in the industry growing this this fast. [22:43] So you know the interesting to see what sort of numbers the Wall Street analyst put out in terms of their projections for the 2018 and 2019 models but I don't think they they do the these disclose to their names cause that writes got. Scot: [22:58] Yeah I saw one guy updated this model and he said 20 18 lb 234 billion and 2019 lb 284 billion so. Still still really big numbers one of the things that was you know making some of the Wall Street guys a little skittish is. The revenue guidance like you said is pretty solid at kind of like a 38% growth point at the midpoint, evidence of used Amazon coming at the height side there was kind of thinking it'll be 40% so we'll see but then their bottom line guidance was pretty light so it's kind of like 300 million to a billion which kind of either is conservatism or Amazon saying. Hey we're going to, we had a great fourth quarter we're going to go to another investment cycle so the Wall Street folks that that Paul Amazon the kind of live in fear of these kind of Amazon ghost these Harvest. Swear they'll Harvest a bunch of investment state made this this year is very much a harvest year so you're really good bottom line. Probably under spent on capex from an entry no overachieved on the bottom line as well and then, Aaron lives in fear that they're going to wake up one day and say alright we're going to best. Three-blade dollars in original content or you know a you know our whole load fulfillment system with trucks and everything or, so that's just kind of things ratchet up there the worry. Turn off the wall of worry gets higher and this is the one kind of negative that I saw everyone call out was you know what. [24:28] What could they be spending that much money on that's like an incremental billion and a half of spend and they're going to Wawa color on that and, they're kind of elusive on the phone call about giving any details what's going on there so it's going to be a wait and see you through the first quarter one thing I always watches the announcements around number of fulfillment centers so that's what we'll keep an eye on that, add to my knowledge I didn't see them announce any in January which is kind of unusual they may have been in a quiet. So maybe we'll see a little bit of a raft of those coming out now they've announced earnings. Jason: [25:01] And there's a whole you know there's there's a big crop of openings that they try to get done before holiday obviously so it it makes little sense it would slow down. Scot: [25:11] Yeah they they I'm sure they need a month just kind of breathe. Jason: [25:16] Yeah so one other piece of interesting Amazon news that's come across my desk this month is not directly related to the earnings but I still think is exciting is it appears a lot of. 1p sellers on Amazon are getting new options for what content they get to put on their product detail pages. I'm so historically there's basic content that you provide to Amazon and Amazon you know puts on that PDP for free and then there are like richer media options that would let you do things like. You know have some product comparison charts are some some animated tutorials explaining your product or videos or things like that. And those are often called a A+ content and they're super important to. The the engagement and conversion rate on those on those pages but they're you know they generally have been a premium thing that Amazon has as charged for. And this quarter we're seeing Amazon start. To give away a bunch of what were the traditional a plus content options so making them free to any seller and they're adding even more exotic. Options that you can pay for it so it's essentially a lot of sellers are getting the option to customize their pdp's to a far greater extent than they. Ever been able to before and you have given an Amazon has become such an important distribution point for so many products. [26:47] That that's really important to a lot of sellers so it's interesting to me that they they continue to evolve that pretty rapidly. Scot: [26:54] Could you know there's always this kind of it's hard to keep track of these things are available to 1 p and summer 3p and summer both do you know. Is this is an on both sides or is it just for brands or is it is it also third-party sellers. Jason: [27:10] Yep so I have primarily seen this exclusively on the one p I can't definitively say that it's not available on the 3p but like one of the things you have to think about it's it's hard for Amazon to sell. Actual like extra product attribute opportunities on the 3p side because all the seller share. The same PDP into essentially. You know one one seller would be paying for that extra content and then all the the other people piggybacking on that listing would be riding along for free. [27:43] So like for the most part I see that these opportunities at the PDP level are exclusively to one piece hours but but Amazon isn't quite frankly they're not very good at life. Publishing open price West and saying hey here's all the programs we have in here's how much they cost and they're the same for everybody you know what it feels like for the most part of the offer everything and negotiate everything on a. Need your account by account basis and so like not not every Star tends to get the same options for the same deal. Scot: [28:22] Cool so that's kind of some good Roundup of Amazon's quarter any other interesting Amazon news before we kind of widen the lens look at other companies. Jason: [28:33] I think I think that's an interesting conflicting rumors out there about Amazon's effort to monetize ads on the Alexa echo system. Scot: [28:46] Gulfport what are you here. Jason: [28:48] So they're there had been some rumors at the beginning of the year that a few big sellers had been offered a. [28:57] Promotional opportunity. 2 baht to be the recommended product via voice Commerce when someone's ordering a product for the first time so so is that sounds more complicated than it is so you say Alexa to order batteries and you bought a bunch of batteries before, Amazon going to use your purchase history to try to predict what batteries are talking about, but if you've never buy batteries before Amazon is going to come back and say I have a Amazon elements 8 pack of double a batteries is that what you want in you, can say yes or no in so there was there was some rumor that like Brands were given the opportunity to be that that Amazon Choice product and then last week Amazon sort of came out publicly and said no no no, you know we we've looked at at adding adds to the the Amazon Echo System and we just don't think that makes sense and we think it's disruptive to the user experience when so they, they sort of explicitly said that they're not doing that so so, the stuff you heard about Google like that could be that we don't see ads from any one invoice which I don't think any of us are going to feel very bad about. Scot: [30:13] Yeah one thing that was interesting that there was a lot of talk about is so a lot of the the business and world leaders were at Davos and I need to use that platform to announce that this kind of interesting contortion of, Amazon Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase are going to pull their efforts and work on Healthcare and is very nebulous they're going to start a company, it's not clear who's going to owner run this company and it's kind of going to be dog food in whatever this is they build for their own employees sounds like what they're doing, but you know this causes ripples throughout the world because that we talked on the show there's been Talk of the Amazon opening kind of a pharmacy online and then you start to say. Amazon nursing pieces that kind of think about your Amazon. Using the cloud services to kind of have health services so, yo a nice portal for employees the ability to manage all the healthcare programs and then Berkshire Hathaway has a big division that does insurance so they could kind of provide that. Then you would also need some kind of a you know a financial service piece around that too so that's give me something to really watch but that's good. [31:27] This kind of thing could disrupt the entire insurance industry or you know all the HR systems out there so or it could be a big nothing Burger so I have to kind of see where it goes it's kind of a, free nebulous right now but it was all the Talking Heads could talk about for for quite a while. Jason: [31:44] Yeah yeah and your point like it it you know if it's them trying to aggravate their buying power across those three Enterprises that's, probably not a very meaningful so you know did the three of them together don't employ as many people as Walmart so they're probably not, going to let you know make dramatic changes to healthcare system but if Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos and Jamie dimon are trying to collaborate and figure out a, a new product or a new a new way to solve the healthcare problem for employees that you know. Is there a free smart guys that have a broken paradigms before so that potentially could be interesting and exciting. [32:20] Another piece of non Amazon news that has has everyone buzzing is. Early in the year I think the first week of this year the Supreme Court announced that they were going to hear a case which is I believe South Carolina versus Overstock. [32:41] Dot-com and so this is a case about sales tax. [32:46] At the moment there's a the Supreme Court has ruled on one sales tack case which is. North Carolina versus quill and in that ruling essentially they said that in order to be required to collect sales tax. You have to have a physical presence or a Nexus in in each state in so if you have no presence in that state you're not obligated to collect text a lot of lawyers were really surprised by that that ruling. Because there are a lot of other occasions where your required to comply with the States laws even though you're not physically in that state. [33:24] But be that as it may that's been a lot of land and e-commerce texting for a long time is. If you have a if you have a physical presence in a state you have to collect tax if you don't have a physical presence in that state you don't. [33:37] So again most of the omni-channel retailers with brick-and-mortar stores in every state. There they've always had to collect tax Amazon has has slowly negotiated into paying taxes in in essentially every state as they've opened more. More of fulfillment centers in distribution centers and so today Amazon Flex tax in every state that has a state tax oh. A couple states don't don't have sales tax like a Portland Oregon and in the maybe Nevada or Florida. But sit there collecting tax everywhere said they're not really affected but if the Supreme Court rules in favor of South Carolina South Dakota in this. This new case the which they could you know here in a I want to say March of this year that suddenly obligates all other online sellers to start collecting tax. [34:30] And there a couple interesting things that happened then. Number one like you potentially have to calculate a different tax to collect for every municipality which potentially could be more than a thousand different tax districts in the US. So that becomes a huge burden for small companies that are selling online to have to figure out all these taxes. It's probably a huge Boom for the commercial tax companies that will sell services to all these guys so you can you can you know that's an extra fee for all those like you know small Shopify sellers. [35:03] And in my mind the biggest entity out there not collecting sales tax. Is actually Amazon 3-piece sellers Sowell Amazon collect tax on other one piece sales they leave it up to the individual 3-piece sellers what whether they have an obligation to collect sales tax or not and overwhelming majority. [35:22] Don't except for in the state they're doing business in and so if the Supreme Court ruling goes against Overstock it could have a very pronounced effect on three-piece selling on Amazon. Scot: [35:35] Yeah and it's pretty complicated to because there's a bunch of scenarios right there's there's a scenario where I'm I'm a seller on Amazon, and I have Nexus in North Carolina which is where my warehouses and I'm shipping all of the country so that's one so what most sellers do there is they say they collect the sales tax for North Carolina and Amazon has settings for this so say it up 7% in North Carolina I will collect that but the other states I don't have a Nexus etcetera, maybe you're more sophisticated Celerity out to our houses so that gives you 2 points in Nexus but and. Amazon doesn't really open on this Amazon says you're responsible for figuring out your own texting. So so Amazon's listen to saying we're not going to your lawyers here we're not going to accept any liability for you collecting you're not collecting that you tell us what you want to do and then they actually give you some, they rolled out some nicer apis that give you kind of that you know this this tax software used to be hundreds of thousands of dollars and now Amazon's rolled out whatever they use sellers can have access to it for you still pay for it but not really at the scale it's it's pretty reasonable, but then it gets complicated right because I'm using FBA. And you don't there's a PA is pretty much in Most states I think like 40 States and you, it's not very easy to get from Amazon where your product is once it gets kind of into that cloud of warehouses it gets distributed out and you also don't. You don't have a lot of control over today selling Amazon hey please don't put my product in Illinois cuz I really don't want to pay state sales tax there that's not really how the. [37:11] The phone network works so. What most sellers do is they just kind of say well you know I'll I'm small business how can I take the risk on that so this this could be you know. Can I kind of clothes McPherson these guys that you know they may I end up having them a relatively complex set of States they need to figure out and, not a lot of great infrastructure for figuring out where their products are the release valve on that would be so perfect Prime and there was a release a press release Amazon's investing more and more around giving sellers that are kind of larger scale the bility to have their products Prime enabled meeting their Prime eligible and are primed as they like to say and, and then using their own warehouses to get them to the consumers and two days that could be, you know it's interesting Amazon's doing a lot more around there obviously I think it's primarily cuz they want more Prime eligible product but you could see it as a, a way of kind of if sellers were freaked out about this and wanted to have more control over Nexus that that's the answer essentially. Jason: [38:10] Yeah yeah I can imagine there that Amazon is it is potentially rooting for South Dakota in this case because, a lot of the 3p sellers feel like one of the reasons they can be competitive in one of the reasons they can they can sell their goods even when Amazon is also selling their saying Goods is because of that tax advantage right and so potentially if they don't have that tax advantage to two good things happen for Amazon. The one that Amazon 1p product wins the buy box more often. [38:41] And number too it's hurting and suddenly forces everyone in the Amazon Echo System 2. Comply completely with with the law and it eliminates all this gray area of who's collecting what tax on FBA. And so that you can imagine in some ways Amazon would say hey in the long run that's cleaner now in the short run that could mean three PCL slow down on Amazon which is you know one of them are profitable elements so. So who knows one thing I would point out. Is the Supreme Court rules in favor of South Dakota so now everyone's obligated to collect tax everywhere it's very likely. The Congress doesn't just sit Pat right so there was a lot of of work on legislation about at what kind of sales tax internet sales company should be collecting. A number of years ago and there was this thing called The Marketplace Fairness Act in. The the main notion in Marketplace Fairness Act is hey every online so I should be collecting tax but which should be a simplified tax so we don't have all this. This complicated math and so instead of having a thousand different tax rates maybe we agree that all online sellers pay one simplified tax rate. And so you can imagine of the Supreme Court rules in South Dakota's favor that might be the impetus. To Congress to pass some sort of like that and. [40:13] Conversely if Overstock wins there's like 8 more cases from other states that that are also in the queue and potentially could get to the Supreme Court later so it's not like. Even if if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Overstock that this is over so it's the interesting thing to follow. [40:31] Moving on to a couple ass little news news Clips UPS also had their earnings call. Yesterday or today and one interesting thing that came up they had a good quarter as well. [40:48] But the. They there they beat their estimates in their stock still took a little hit largely because they announced that they're capex spending for next year was going to be much higher. Then it had been in any previous year and the explanation for that was that they're being forced to invest a lot more in sorting centers and airplanes. To make all the the residential deliveries that they're doing for Amazon more profitable and so you know that the sort of pithy had a headline is that UPS has an Amazon problem. They're having that invest a lot to to deliver what they're already delivering to Amazon and of course. Amazon's needs are only going to grow you know potentially 38% more. Scot: [41:34] Yeah and the other two could be a bit of a trap here where, they're having a grow their infrastructure to support Amazon and Amazon is growing in structure outside of UPS so it's some point you know if your UPS you have to kind of start to wonder how far ahead of your skis can you get on that before it gets kind of risky. Jason: [41:51] Exactly if this was a video podcast we'd be playing Admiral Ackbar saying it's a trap right now. [41:59] Reference I threw in there just for Scott in the last earnings that jumped out at me from this week eBay had their earnings called yesterday, and I I think they the like met or slightly better beat their earnings but the, the big drama was in there called they announced that they're. Mandatory partnership with PayPal whom is a reminder that used to own and and spun off as a separate company when they spend them off, the spin-off included in agreement that eBay we keep using PayPal for a certain period of time so that. Of time is now expiring and eBay has announced that they plan to shift payment providers from PayPal to a big European payment processor called Aiden, and so that, they probably has some implications on eBay but it has potential huge implications on PayPal because I think eBay is something like 18% of PayPal's Revenue. Scot: [43:04] Yeah they the CFO of. PayPal is on CNBC any shows 18% but it was like their slowest growing peace there's little shade there's something going on between those two companies are definitely got to get zika nomics driving it but it seems like there's some more kind of, they are not really getting along very well right now. Jason: [43:22] Yeah and it's like I would like to cenarios I you can totally imagine that this is an actual break up, and if so that is interesting that says something about how competitive in the marketplace PayPal is if eBay really feels like there's a meaningful savings to be had by shifting to this, to another payment processor that, you know potentially said something negative about PayPal's competitiveness but you could also Imagine the eBay and PayPal are negotiating their first, fees agreement since they're they're sort of mandatory partnership expired and all of this could. Potentially be somewhat posturing is there sort of negotiating with each other so you could think of it a little bit like the showtime having a break up with Time Warner or while they you know. [44:08] Weather negotiating how much the cable company should pay for free HBO or Showtime or something. [44:15] And with that we have Perfectly Used up the allotted 45 minutes we had for today as we're trying to get the shows a little bit shorter for our listeners so we greatly appreciate. Your participation in the show today and if you have any questions or thoughts as always we love to hear from you on our Facebook page or on Twitter we we have a couple of good good questions that came through this this weekend fact on Facebook. So I think I have some answers there in fact. And of course if you enjoy the show we would very greatly appreciate you taking just a second jumping over to iTunes and giving us that 5-star review, we don't we don't charge anything we don't run any ads on the show so that way you can you can pay us for all the time we put in that show as right as a nice review on iTunes. Scot: [45:06] Yep thanks Wilson there buddy. Jason: [45:08] Until next time happy you comercing.

EP113 - NRF Preview http://jasonandscot.com Episode 113 is preview of the NRF Big Show 2018. Recap of CES 2018 Preview of NRF Big Show 2018 Retail News Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 113 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, January 15th, 2018. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 113 being recorded on Sunday January 14th 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason this is one of those are very rare times over the course of the Year where we are actually not only in the same town but in the same room at the same time. Jason: [0:53] I know it's awesome we make eye contact while we're talking this is very weird for me. Scot: [0:58] Yeah it's very weird I'm usually just staring deeply into the the computer. Jason: [1:02] I'm staring deeply into a photo of you I have over my computer. Scot: [1:05] Are there candles. Jason: [1:07] We don't need to get in any more specific. Scot: [1:08] Call Sue. Jason: [1:12] Why are we here Together Scott. Scot: [1:13] We are here at Big Beautiful New York City for NRS Big Show. It's that time of year again where were you here making the Trek down to the Javits Center no snow on the ground this year I think that's the thing the last three in RFC I've been trudging through snow but this one's pretty dry. Jason: [1:30] There's no snow yet but the mean in RF weather tradition is the blizzard that comes in during the show and makes it impossible to go home after the show and if I'm if I'm remembering correctly there is it forecast for snow during the show so we'll have to see. Scot: [1:45] We may be doing a lot of podcast from the the podcast you here in New York. Jason: [1:49] Exactly are our misery could be our listeners benefit. Scot: [1:53] And what's up we definitely want to do a little preview of some of the things that were already hearing about it in RF but you are fresh out of Vegas where you were at CES I want to hear all about your CS6 transfer. Exciting things I saw the Tweet about but I'm sure there's more color you can share. Jason: [2:10] Yeah so there's an annual tradition for me is you know you celebrate New Years and then you'll get on a plane and fly to Las Vegas with, 180000 of your closest friends to see the latest, new Innovations in electronics and then you go straight from there to New York for the blizzard and the big interrupt retail shop and I go to CES, almost every year I think this is my 32nd 2-year CES largely to see, new trends that might affect our our clients on our Industries. Scot: [2:48] Now that he's become Dex and CS remember and you probably go if we're talking 32 years they used to be separate shows then it kind of merged and now you can hardly see a computer anywhere at at CVS. Jason: [3:01] Yeah so they were competing shows context was in November CES is in January they both briefly also tried to have second shows in Chicago at another time of year was that that wasn't very successful, condex went out of business some of those exhibitors then moved over to CES and over history at various times they've been industries that. UCS is an important part of their business and then moved on so I can the video games used to all exhibit at CES they outgrew it and launch their own show which is he three computers are not a, super robust part of the Consumer Electronics ecosystem at the moment they're pretty flat. Although there is a big push people are feeling like the Esports and the high-end gaming is. Starting to drive a meaningful niche of these high-performance laptop sales. Scot: [3:53] One category that is CS now is Auto City Autos used to be kind of at their show which is called a Syma and then another part of SEMA Ace. Jason: [4:03] Cosima is the auto parts show that's in Las Vegas there there's a course of the Detroit Auto Show is going on right now in Detroit which is where all the. Karma you typically see car manufacturers in Detroit launching their new Mustangs and those are two things and you'd get the like. Tire guys in the the oil filter guys and all that at SEMA and for many years one of the big pieces of the consumer electronic show was the aftermarket. Car audio industry which is of course almost completely dead. Scot: [4:34] Yeah and then we had GPS is for a while they were big now actually Autumn acres are there in a pretty big way right. Jason: [4:40] Exactly so they have taken over the hall that used to have the car stereo equipment in it and they're largely showing car tech in so you know they're they're typically not launching their new vehicles. It in Las Vegas they're typically showing the new in-dash platform their new automation things the new wireless Services they're offering and what's what's a little funny is you you go to all the car boots and you. You might say you'll see some cars but you see a lot more like. Check components from the cars and then you go to all the other Halls where you see the the major ingredient tech companies like Bosch and Intel and Qualcomm that make alot of the parts in the car. And they are of course have fancy complete cars and they're both so you go to the tech show to see the cars in the car show to see the tech. Scot: [5:31] So what's new in cars is it is there still a big battle for the Smart Car platform already moved on to self driving cuz I know Intel's bigger than that what were some of the big things and Auto. Jason: [5:41] Dazzled by far the big Trend in the the car boots this year is Automation and particular the self-driving Vehicles they have this system. This ranking system from. Animated level 1 through 5 so I go level 1 car has tools that help you drive better like a flashing light that tells you that the car in front of you stops and two can kind of assist you and certain things. Like like a break for you when there's a car in front of you three can let you have your hands off the wheel for tonight you have your eyes off the wheel in five doesn't have a wheel, inside there a lot of now level 3 cars being shown at the at the show and a lot of the, the tech Innovation was around like these these autonomous vehicles and then to a lesser extent. Electric vehicles in new charging Technologies and things like that Qualcomm has a thing called Halo which is wireless charging for your car so you have a plate in your garage and you. You just parked the car over the plate and it charges it overnight free. Scot: [6:51] This may seem Irrelevant for retail but I saw on CNBC Ford, you announced they're very excited about driverless cars but they really kind of they don't believe that they'll be kind of a fleet kind of a thing like an Uber there really more into package delivery so I think that it's going to last mile. Absolution. That was kind of interesting that the others there's a major auto manufacturer that really thinks it's going to be really more for delivery and he specifically talked about new from stores to do consumers. Actually competing with FedEx Amazon ups and all those kind of folks. Jason: [7:26] Yeah yeah I mean there's another time we can talk about from that the show is Robotics and so it's kind of a combination of Robotics and automation there's a lot of interesting potential, new helping that last mile but the Ford booth at CES is kind of interesting they really focused on. Their vision for what a city looks like in a world in which most of the vehicles are autonomous and so one of the big questions that they they were trying to answer in their Booth is. How do pedestrians interact with autonomous vehicles right like to, often when you're crossing a busy street and there's a crosswalk you may go out of your way to make eye contact with a driver before you just make a leap of faith in Jump front of the vehicle so what do passengers expect to do. When an autonomous car is coming up to a crosswalk or those kinds of things, in one of the things that they did to study this is they really did this big research study on future cities but they actually invented a costume that looks like a car seat. And so they say they dress the guy up to make him look like the empty seat of the car and sat him down in the car so it was a fake autonomous vehicle. I'm just thinking that that's a funny job to go home and tell your parents you just got is your portraying a car seat. Scot: [8:41] Or when you have time to go to Starbucks I must look really weird it's like here comes a Walkin car seat. Jason: [8:45] Exactly so they videotaped all these consumer reactions and they have this notion around like we'll probably have to have some Universal standards for like a lighting system in the car that you know as pedestrians know that they're being seen or those kinds of things. Scot: [8:59] When ironic when is the new there's a Netflix series that started in the BBC and then got picked up but it's called Black Mirror and in this they just released season 4 I don't know if you watch it or not I think you're behind on everything. Jason: [9:12] I am kind of on most of the stuff you give me Groupon so that's that's next on my list. Scot: [9:17] No spoilers but one of the episodes it has this kind of plot device where there is a driverless vehicle that delivers pizzas and it kind of. Knock some of this guy and it's not really part of the whole thing but the looking shape of it was really interesting like you just wanted to know a lot of time thinking about how this look and then I saw that CS. Pizza Hut or. Jason: [9:37] Toyota and Pizza Hut add a had a partnership for an autonomous pizza deliver. Scot: [9:40] And it was just like it was exactly like the thing on dark mirror so I was really really very strange and then I saw an article about it and there was no coordination or anything it was just. Jason: [9:51] I wonder who inspired who think they're cleaning independent invention and then. Scot: [9:57] It's kind of has to be because well if the show had known about pizza thing it could have been but the shows literally been out for like that came out December. Like 30th or something so there's no way they could have designed a prototype that fast but it's kind of really Tales from the future kind of a thing to happen there. Okay so that's Autos then as I was sitting watching remotely and not fighting for calves with a hundred and eighty thousand other people I saw, a lot of Twitter traffic in stories were around the the home automation and then also kind of the battle of the smart speakers and intelligent thing so so last year report from cs1, this year it looks like Google is really stepping it up don't give us an update on what you saw there. Jason: [10:41] Jump to that last year we didn't necessarily expect partsmart, speakers to be a big part of CES but you went to the show and Amazon with embedded in like over 400 devices at the show and you know I seem to be ubiquitous in Amazon didn't have a, their own presents at the show yet they were getting on the bus, a big part of why I say yes existed to generate PR to drive future sales and so most people declare the Amazon the winter that show they didn't take a booth and yet they had this great, present so this year we are all curious to see if they would. Double down on that or if any of their competitors would make up any ground and it really clearly has emerged a two-horse race with Amazon and Google so this was probably the death knell for Cortana Cortana was the first born, on the PC is part of the Windows operating system and even all the Windows laptop manufacturers are now shipping laptops that are Alexa enabled, not Cortana enabled. Scot: [11:40] No it's a Samsung when I can't remember its name. Jason: [11:42] Bixby in Samsung is definitely has an interesting strategy overall theme of the show is. The traditional product you expect to see the show we're not very improved from last year it was a very irritable year and what the exhibitors were more focused on was. The platform of how all these products work together rather than their individual features so. LG and Samsung and I'll have Smart refrigerator smart washer smart kitchen is all these different tools and instead of showing you how much better the refrigerator is this year than last year there were more focused on how much better to the house works when all these, devices talk together so that. Scot: [12:21] That's a lot of mocked-up houses in this kind of thing. Jason: [12:24] Yeah I like vignettes and in these use cases like a you just bake lasagna in your Smart Oven your dishwasher knows you just. Bake the pan and so it's setting the dishwasher to the the pan scrubbing mode rather than the echo mode because it's got to get the the big done she's off the pan. Scot: [12:43] Does anyone have a nest camera for looking in my refrigerator so when I'm at work and I can't remember if I have milk or not. Jason: [12:48] Yeah it that's one of the most popular features in a smart refrigerators are these these webcam. Scot: [12:53] The ones on the outside where I can see inside isn't it I need like seeing. Jason: [12:56] Inside so that when you're at work you can at the store you can see if you need eggs or milk or those kinds of things. Scot: [13:02] The fair when I saw her was at sokoler came out with a pretty much any any kind of Plumbing fixture in your house can now be Alexa enabled so. They had the suitcase for the guys holding a baby with both hands. And he says Alexa turn on the sink and then he like takes a hand and he liked holds bottle and put it under and it's kind of like why can't you just take his hand in like turn on the sink and then they have a toilet did you did you get to check out the toy. Jason: [13:27] I did I did not actually test the toilet but I did observe the the Alexa enabled toilet and yeah that was in bed and everything it's not clear. That you want or would benefit from voice embedded in all these products and the what was interesting about the whole voice battle. This year was you know the Google had a much bigger presence than last year they both took a very big boost themselves which will come back to you in a second Amazon actually stepped out the size of their boots so they actually had. Immodest Alexa Echo System booth. Last year they had the treasure truck so they should have had the treasure truck and these examples of all the third-party products that work on the Alexa Echo System Google built this big Booth with they want some new hardware at the show so they have. Through Partners they're making what I would call Echo work type product to a Google home product with the screen. In a very familiar form factor that people that. I have that the echo look and today he wants to Booth to demonstrate all those things unfortunately that the booth is super extravagant and was designed for big parts of it to be outdoors. And for the first time in a hundred 15 days it rained in Las Vegas and so literally the the Google Booth was rained out on the first day which I imagine is a multimillion-dollar mistake. Scot: [14:48] I saw I had a slide did you get a chance to sit down the side. Jason: [14:51] It it did I did not get a chance to sit down inside their Booth was so crowded that they literally had like wait time management for all the various things so you are. It's 15 minutes to go to the roof and go down the slide and I just didn't have the time. Scot: [15:08] Yeah I did back on the color thing I heard that the deluxe integration with the toilet was kind of crappy. Jason: [15:15] I'll add the drum roll and post no no I won't listen. It's ok Google like did everything presents they were embedded in in more products but what they really did as they spent a fortune on Advertising so, so Google bought all the outdoor ads they had as on a ton of the taxis they wrap the Las Vegas Metro in in Google sign in. Scot: [15:38] Stairs I was under the stairs. Jason: [15:40] Yeah they I don't specifically remember some. Scot: [15:42] Escalators are like an escalator. Jason: [15:43] Yeah so they they spent a lot of money on outdoor advertising which is ironic I guess given that they're primarily an advertising platform. Scot: [15:50] Should ask him how they measured the ethics. Jason: [15:52] Yeah I don't think there is one. They definitely got more mindshare as a result of spending all that money and it certainly shows that there Devin Ernest interest in winning the space it feels like. They're still pretty far behind from an integration standpoint there certainly far behind from a skills perspective as well as we've talked about. But it's really emerging as a two-horse race and lots of retailers have a vested interest in Amazon not owning. The the home automation voice space and so you know there's a lot of people that that you know I'm rooting for Google because they're the. Potential foil to Amazon. Scot: [16:34] The Google Talk anything about the business model and how ads are in a work and they're just kind of like charging in and we'll figure it out later. Jason: [16:42] Yeah they really didn't like obviously wasn't they didn't talk a lot about it but there was a big announcement to me last quarter when both Target and Walmart and some other retailers started sharing first-party data with Google so that. If you if you're in the Google echo system in your shop at Walmart and you say order more peanut butter Google has access to your peanut butter purchase history from Walmart's to fulfill their. The the most likely peanut butter better you'd want right in that was historically abused competitive Advantage for Amazon is there artificial intelligence system had all this historical data on consumer purchases and since Google doesn't sell anything. They're pretty disadvantaged in. Scot: [17:21] Just Walmart and Target both share their data with Google and you say or did you just say order more peanut butter will Google know a Jason buys the most. Jeff from Walmart and allergic from Walmart like what use that to discern between retailers. Jason: [17:37] Yeah although it's it's the last that it's deciding like you opt-in so in the Google home Echo System you say I want my fulfillment partner to be Walmart and then that. That Ops you into Walmart sharing your data with Google. And then you're likely to get Jeff if you primarily order Jeff there that is an advertising opportunity so when you're a freaking purchaser of Jeff. They're likely going to sell you the Jeff you frequently purchased but if you say order peanut butter and your not a frequent purchaser of Jeff they need to. Suggest something to you and they typically pick one brand historically that's been this Amazon Choice program on the Amazon platform so they Amazon Choice products, usually ends up being the recommended product in in the Alexa Echo System but we're seeing some strong indications that Amazon is actually selling. The that. First recommended spot for new purchasers to a lot of Brands and so that it's sort of ironic like we've always talked about Google is primarily in a driven business, doesn't have a way to monetize voice Amazon obviously makes money selling stuff and so if voice makes you buy more stuff Amazon food, monetize much better than Google and then irony of ironies it appears that. Amazon is ahead of Google in terms of figuring out good advertising models for voice or at least acceptable ones. Scot: [19:03] Yeah okay a couple more serious than what was the worst or the wackiest thing you saw. Jason: [19:09] Yeah every year there's some goofy products there's that you know the. Bluetooth for car something like that something that jumped out of me is completely wacky there's a ton of new smart Health Tech and particularly a ton of sleep Tech in some of that seems. Somewhat silly right so, aromatherapy and video systems you know help you get 4 hours of sleep in a 20-minute power nap for example so there's a lot of that and then one product we thought there was kind of interesting I think you could both be the wackiest product or the biggest commercial hit. Is this the 3D printing for presumably young girls finger nails so you can. Scot: [19:50] Does chocolate last year too in my room. Jason: [19:52] There their they're definitely in some 3D chocolate printer. Scot: [19:55] I thought you're going to say chocolate. Jason: [19:56] For a while yeah but to me that would not be silly at all. Scot: [19:58] You need to light a printer. Jason: [20:05] Well it's. Scot: [20:07] Did you see that Samsung wall around what there's a lot of Buzz around the Samsung. Jason: [20:10] Yeah so every year there's a big competition around what's the newest most amazing television that could be invented and a lot of these two televisions are ones that never get commercial adoption there there. You know concept televisions that they they build very similar to a concept car. And so they keep getting bigger and bigger or thinner and thinner LG at a television that you would like an 88 inch 8K television that you would literally roll up. Scot: [20:38] I saw that it comes in like a little tube and it kind of rolls up so it could be a very small footprint. Jason: [20:42] Exactly and there is this actual practical problem that a lot of people struggle to self install TVs on the wall so there's a lot of TVs that are damaged shortly after their bought when they fall off the wall and these these you know. LG TVs that are now like 6mm thin like they're literally mounted to the wall with tape so that that is kind of cool and interesting the Samsung. Wall TV is just impressive for its high resolution and enormousness they didn't give us a spec for exactly how many inches it is but it's well over 200 in I'm so that was just a. A very cool piece of glass. There you know there are a couple of the new car manufacturers can't afford to go to Detroit Auto Show that they watched new cars from. Companies that don't have a history in the outer space tender launch at CES and so there's this new electric autonomous vehicle called the Bryant which is science. Which you know it may or may not ever see the light of day but the concept car looked very cool and it had a what they call a pillar to pillar. Digital screen so the the entire Dash it a 4-foot wide Ash is all one big big Monitor and if I own this vehicle I would spend most of my time just sitting in the garage gaming because it's so it would be the best green I own. Scot: [22:00] Okay let's what let's bring it back to retail what was the the most interesting Commerce stuff for our kind of give us a tour of who who was talking Commerce. Jason: [22:14] Yeah so it really isn't a retail show I'm a bunch of retail people go to the show because all the manufacturers are building displays to introduce their products to. Two people at the show very similar to have a retail would merchandise the products in the store so out of the merchandising team for retailers go to look and see how LG and Samsung and Sony are presenting their new products, addition of the show Ali Baba had a big boost that a booth last year, they went even bigger this year but what's interesting it really didn't focus on e-commerce or their Marketplace at all it really focused on. Actual Alibaba branded products that Ali Baba's inventing so they have a smart speaker for example and it was really promoting a lot of there. Services many of which will feel very Amazon alike. To westerners so they have a equivalent to AWS into a big part of the booth was committed to their services they have a meeting chat. Telepresence so I can go to meeting or Zoom or a blue jean depending on what region of the country you're in and those. You know they're there demonstrating those things in the booth they did have a baba has an interest that used to own ant Financial which is all the payment stuff. I'm so they had. Ali pay and pay with a smile so that this voice recognition that pay face recognition that pays when you smile that lockers Dropbox Whoppers that you unlock with your face and things like that. Scot: [23:47] I saw you were in a cabin you can actually pay with Ally pay in your. Jason: [23:49] Most of the Las Vegas cabs take Ali pay and you correctly guessed wise cuz there's a huge amount of Chinese tourism in Las Vegas. I lied to you and said I paid with all you pay like you have to have a Chinese bank account to get a wepay account so it turns out to be non-trivial to get one I tried. Scot: [24:05] I figured figured if you don't have Apple pay there's no you have. Jason: [24:08] I do have Apple pay and if anyone doesn't believe me you like send some cash to Jason Goldberg on Apple pay right now and see if it goes through. The battle is the Chinese search engine that's sort of the Chinese equivalent of Google and they had a big boost they had never been there before they also are getting in there. The Consumer Electronics space with some smart speakers and some some other products they have their own device operating system that they're pushing. I'm there was a retail Tech Pavilion at CES but it was. Yeah I think that retail Tech vendors were all getting ready for this weekend in a rest of the the vendors at CES were you know probably not the Marquee. Vendors there's a kind of typical digital signage vendors that we see everywhere like perched that was in the retail Tech Pavilion. And then in the emerging technology section there are a lot of vendors using computer vision for retail applications so a bunch of these Tech guys that don't know retail really well. Are envisioning that every retailer is going to want to face recognition to track every customer and recognize every customer when they go in so that's a super comment. Use case that these Israeli security companies set up set up boosted to pichai unless convinced that retailers want that. But then what what makes perfect sense that there's a lot of is. Companies with expertise in computer vision using that computer vision to create a Amazon go experience for self checkout or for inventory management so they were a bunch of. Companies talking about that one in particular that got some good Buzz is called a ipoly and they they were demonstrating some. [25:47] Some pretty sophisticated use cases of just using cameras of there being Shoppers to the kid very clearly differentiate which product of Chopper and picked up off a shelf. Scot: [25:56] So they were like sad mock-ups of stores with ever showing this technology. Jason: [26:01] Yeah they would claim that we have a complete amazongo equivalent solution and really like. They have sophisticated computer vision technology that identify what the Shoppers doing but you know there's a bunch of other pieces that are required for go I. [26:20] That I'm not sure of the startup companies have invested in solving for a retailer. Scot: [26:26] So while ago it may even last year there's that there's a really big company in China xiaomi that they were going to launch phones here and I think they've got a whole family of gadgets now that seems to disappear were they there. Jason: [26:39] I didn't see them now this CS is not a huge phone show because in February is a huge is the worldwide phone show in Barcelona the Mobile World Congress, you're right there are some Chinese manufacturers that tried to penetrate the US market and maybe the interesting one and I, I never know how to pronounce their name properly is a Chinese company so I'm not going to try on the podcast, is there a big Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer that makes a lot of Premium smartphones in China and they were making a big splash that they were going to, enter the US market and they actually cut a deal with AT&T to sell their phones, in all the AT&T stores until right before CES that was the big announcement and they had a huge booth at CES well. The US government claims that there you know owned by the Chinese government and that their technology isn't secure, and that apparently they the government rattle their saber enough to AT&T backed out on this. The steel in Ogden not to sell this Chinese Hardware. You know if you if you go super nefarious that the Chinese government could somehow have access to these these camera phones and speakers and all these. A consumer stands in the US. Scot: [27:59] Alright last CS topic anything exciting on the in the world of drones and then they are VR. Jason: [28:06] So there is a ton of drones I would say it was a slow year and evolution DJI really dominates the consumer drone space they wants one last year around Siesta became super popular the mavic pro, they've since launched a smaller one in so what you mostly sides he has his everyone else knocking off the. The mavic pro this year so there was a lot of that what was new at CES this year was it was definitely the first year when the robots were very ubiquitous there robots in. All the big boots and then he really range the Spectrum from some that are like practical and have achieved some consumer 6s like like tomorrow vacuum cleaner. Rumah type stuff to some very absurd robot so there are a lot of LG was showing shopping robots that. Drive to shopping cart to follow you around the store so you don't have to push the cart there a bunch of robots that drag your suitcase through the airport for you so you don't have to do that it was like a $35,000 robot that folds your clothes when they come out of the. Scot: [29:06] Oh I saw that was exciting. Jason: [29:08] So maybe that is an application in a retailer folding clothes at the Gap or something like that but I'm not sure a lot of consumers are just like folding up to. Scot: [29:17] To draw a crowd to come see the the folding robot I saw a CS but a Boeing a released a prototype type of a drone that can carry 500 lb. I'm it was interesting it's not a military application I think they've taken the military stuff in Skillet down but the article suitably talked about it being an interesting way you could like load balance between fulfillment centers with that kind of weight load that's kind of interesting you know. Here's a corner of stuff I don't need in Ohio have the Drone carry it to I don't know how far this thing can go but to to another fulfillment center. Jason: [29:49] They're definitely scaling up the Drone technology so they were at least two passenger drones are three passenger jet drones at the at the show so these are like autonomous vehicles that take, passengers in that notion is that that could be a sky taxi in some cases there's an all electric one that Intel is partnering in we were kind of joking about. Yeah probably not perfect timing to have. Autonomous drone with no pilot in it that carries passenger that's being powered by this Intel chip the now is vulnerable to the Meltdown, I'm back I'm not sure I'd want to be directly under that that that drone but they definitely had some big capacities I think even the Bell the big helicopter manufacturer was there with. With some ground so definitely possible and then a lot of the robots are good at moving that stuff around in the last mile to so Hyundai had a bunch of industrial robots obviously the Kiva is. A robot that than Amazon now owns and you joked about the military uses but I will say just superficially a bunch of these drones did look like they. We're just disarmed right before. Scot: [30:56] Yeah it kind of freaks me out the speaking of Black Mirror episode recommend for listeners. All the episodes are independent so you can just like skip around watch the one called heavy metal that when they gave me some good night nurses pretty, okay that's a cool thanks for that CS review that's awesome let's do it quick in RF preview so, I think the thing we're really excited about it is there's a Apple event that we got invited to and that's me tomorrow and. It's we don't know anything about it we just know your typical Apple format limitation has we have something that says we have something in store for you there's a picture of a bag, so seems like apple is doing something around retail technology what you have any speculation what's going on. Jason: [31:43] Yeah I don't have any real insight I am in the dark as much as you it it definitely seems like apple is poised to launch some retail product or service. They never have a booth at CES they want to see us this year but they have a big meeting space it's heavily apple-branded at interrupt this year which I found interesting and so you can buy in that with, ass getting invited to this secret event that they they wouldn't tell us the nature of. I might like the most likely thing is that they're watching some new thing in the payments ecosystem so maybe like the next version of Apple pay or a POS or a you know everything the Apple OS 4. You know commercial retail tack like you know tablet enable meant that kind of stuff. Scot: [32:31] A lot of retailers use the tablet as a retailing thing so maybe it's just more around that or maybe it's just a set of back that's practices doesn't feel like they would do an event and a meeting room for just like hey here's how people are using our technology seems like there must be more. Jason: [32:44] No eyes I think they're going to want something that's apple-branded that that is targeted at the retail industry so I could be super fun we don't don't that many surprises from Apple these days. Scot: [32:54] I know it's over here and if it's if it's Earth shattering we will put out a quick podcast just to kind of lay down our thoughts after we see whatever the amazing thing is I just hope Tim Cook there I've been dying for attempt. I need a good Tim Cook an emoji selfie and be good to do unicorn or I don't know. Jason: [33:15] You said one of the products I bought at CES this year is a 360 camera and so I feel like. Scot: [33:22] 360 song. Jason: [33:23] 360 selfie. Scot: [33:24] Nice. Nothing that we're excited about is we have Casey from Deloitte on the show so we will be putting out. I left some new research that we're going to be talking to Casey for the first time here on the show we have our digital council meeting so that's good. I saw they have a speaker I did not read the details did you. Jason: [33:47] Yeah I think it is a friend of yours we from Alibaba. Scot: [33:51] Oh yeah I do remember now awesome so we'll get to hear all about singles day so that'll be good and how much better it is then Cyber Monday let's see anything else around interested we want to talk about. Jason: [34:04] So there are a number of, interesting private events that are great networking opportunities and you know hopefully we'll we'll get some people inebriated and get them to inappropriately share with us on the podcast for those of you that don't know Scott and I super well, we are not the guys that get invited to all the private, parties in our in our youth so this is this this weird once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we get the invites to the the cool parties. Scot: [34:33] Yeah yeah the Geeks shall inherit the earth. Well we have so that's it on shows let's bang out a little bit of Commerce retail news from this last week so it wouldn't be a Jason Scott showed without. [34:58] Not a ton of Amazon news this week despite the lightest Amazon news for a while. And I'm ending this cuz the company is in a quiet. So I will your public company there's this kind of. Of time where you know how your results were and you can't really say much about them and, I'm excited cuz they did announce when they are going to release. The fourth quarter earnings and that will be on February 1st so we will do a special version of the show where we will cover those will cover will put it down the night of the first and then we'll hopefully get it out on the 2nd if her audio team can, jump on that we've been talking a while about all the rumors around Amazon going into the drug business drug stores, I am now there's a loud drum beat about beauty so I don't know exactly what is King it run off of that but, you know it's pretty clear in the retail World Alton's for doing really well so I think Amazon is kind of turning their guns that way so it'll be interesting to see how that's going. And when I've been dying to ask you about Jason is Kohl's there is this kind of news item that Kohl's is really wanting to work closely with grocers that didn't make a lot of sense to me cuz I'm thinking all right, blue jeans and broccoli what's what's the connection film. Jason: [36:15] That one of you eat a lot of broccoli you can buy small are better-looking bridging. Scot: [36:19] Duncan's are in celery when you tell her you you actually. Jason: [36:22] Net positive or negative calorie intake I guess I think that's not true and. Scot: [36:29] Dang it. Jason: [36:31] Yeah sorry to be the one to. Scot: [36:32] All that celery. Jason: [36:33] Exactly so I think what's Happening Here. Is no retailers have a particular footprint and they buy all the real estate around that footprint so you know what Kohl's store I don't know the exact size but I think they're probably like 60 or 70 thousand square foot store. The something in that range and you don't that's based on a certain merchandising assortment in that's in that store, so overtime categories that you were storkland carry become less successful and you move out of categories or you add new categories and there are times when retailers find that they have more square footage than they can. Profitably manage and so a common play particularly when you're not performing as well as you'd like is how can I downsize by handing some of the the rent responsibility to us too. Subway Surf right so, that the example as you like uses Best Buy like you know they used to sell CDs and video games and music and then of the store that's that's all digital delivered but they can't just shrink their leases in their store, I'm so that they rent space to a lot of their manufacturers Samsung Microsoft. I'm we'll all have shopping shops and so I think Kohl's is in a situation where they had excess base for what they think is their Optimum inventory and so you go looking and say. Who can I profitably Reese this pace to and ideally it should be someone that's going to bring extra traffic to my store that might buy stuff. So in the old days that was always the coffee shop you went looking into to add a Starbucks. [38:09] Because of Cole's real estate proximity there in strip malls that could be convenient places to grocery shop and so it sounds like they've just come up with this notion that. Man is if there is someone only wants to expand in our footprint Subway some of our space people shopping grocery much more frequent so it could be a great traffic driver to the stores and they could benefit from that so well. To see if that idea plays out and if they're able to get some some folks to take them up on that but I think that's what's going on. Scot: [38:40] Yeah and that was Ron Johnson's vision of retail right it would be this kind of we had Omar Asad the analyst on and I forget what he called it but it's kind of like you know a bizarre. Jason: [38:51] Yeah we often called a retail bizarre and it's actually the common, merchandising way in a lot of places in the world sew-in in the USA department store owns all the space and they decide what brands are in it and they they merchandise the brands in Europe most of the department stores are. Simply landlords that rent individual shelves in the store to individual brands. Scot: [39:13] Boots. Jason: [39:16] Just another other news that there's a e-commerce your player that focuses on the club. Experiences in those large format box that we've had on the show. The there are rumors that they are a potential acquisition Target and I think a Consortium of grocery stores was mentioned as a potential buyer like Kroger. Scot: [39:39] Yeah the number that stuck out to me was 500 million so fingers crossed for a friend's at box on that one. Jason: [39:44] And that is that that's close to their last round right so that would mean the the early folks will do really well and the the last investors probably won't do so well that if that ends up being the number and it happens. Scot: [39:57] Sometimes it works tops for that cuz the last investors get these really nice preference tax. Jason: [40:03] Gotcha cool see you that's why I have you here to make sure that my. My Angel Investing is fruitful one near and dear to my heart Circuit City is relaunching. So folks some of you young ones on the shelf that is that was a specialty retailer that that kind of grew up and competed with Best Buy they went bankrupt, a number of years ago I want to say formally like 2008, the the brand changed hands in bankruptcy court a few times so they're actually was this company in Florida TigerDirect that bought the the brand and they launched relaunch the Circuit City website for a few years. Scot: [40:49] And at CompUSA. Jason: [40:50] Yeah they wait about CompUSA they. If I'm remembering there's some drama there too I think they're there was some like weird finances and the owner and some. There could be some some interesting backstory their bets of the brand changed hands again and you know frankly when I heard that someone bought the the brand out of bankruptcy unlike someone else's like. Trying to Leverage The Nostalgia and they're going to watch another. Another you know reskinned website and it's actually more than that like that they have a new ownership that there intending to open retail stores. And so this would both be a website and some number of new stores it's it's interesting cuz I'm not sure you would look at the Consumer Electronics base and say what we really need in consumer electronics is. Is more stores and another brand to buy that place but you know we'll have to see what their unique value proposition is they bring to the table. Scot: [41:47] That one you talked about called. Yeah yeah, some Vision like a cool like a smaller footprint showroom thing cuz I use gadgets you want to touch him and feel him and you know her shoes for four people to care about shoes. Best Buy refills at 4 meal at times I'll go look at stuff and then order it on to another retailer. Jason: [42:14] And I I would say you like one of the weather problems with all the trees retail consolidation there used to be this phone to see you could be a geek, and walk into the store and you discover something new every single time you walked in that store that you didn't know exist that you wanted and one of the things that all the digital transparency is created and like all the consolidation of the stores is created you know really, you working on Apple Store and you never see something. You didn't know was available before you walked in the store and you know how I feel like that's going to happen to be the case it at even Best Buy now is well and so it would be interesting to see if there. You know that they're going to provide that sort of fun jolt of discovery. Scot: [42:53] Yeah kind of on the opposite side of the spectrum my wife was shocked she showed me this the other day, she likes this designer named Ella moss and they have some kind of annual sale and she went to the website to check out the annual sale, and announced they're closing their website and it said say goodbye to lmr.com but say hello to us in our stores and they just pointing people to Nordstrom in a variety of other stores where their items are found so I thought that was. Certainly opposite trend of what we've seen out there but they must have. Musta Had A Good Reason baby was too expensive to run the website maybe maybe they get pressure from their Channel partners that kind of said we don't like you offering this track. I don't know what it is just have a really interesting use kids haven't seen. Happen. Jason: [43:38] It's bugging the trend I suspect there is some serious distressed underlines for that but I applaud them putting Silver Lining trying to put it out there favorably. Scot: [43:51] Last topic one hit on we're about 14 days into January so we have about half of the Retailer's the brick and mortar guys, I report monthly same for sale so we're getting up kind of a, early read on holiday and then once we have that Amazon report in early February and then kind of by mid February we should have a pretty good read on how how they came in but did you notice any of the or some interesting holiday things you saw that have come out so far. Jason: [44:18] That's what's interesting like obviously overall it was a very good holiday like probably the best one since, 2010 2011 the most most, retailers like you know either announced that they performed at that sort of average growth or even outperform the industry and there are a few outliers that we saw. Be significantly down and so you know it's about a rising tide raises all boats when you're the boat that sinking in that Rising tide, that's a particularly you know owner assign so we seventies Sears did not benefit from the, renewed spending they were down significantly I think like 16% and I think it announced another round of store closures I mentioned on the I did mention but in the store predictions bet, certainly feels like a year of major retailer. Go away and I think Sears would be unfortunately a good candidate for that. Scot: [45:15] Yeah when it's surprise out of folks this is kind of one of those bury the lede so Walmart had a positive news that they are, because of the the tax act that was passed the raising the minimum wage for employees to $11 an hour I think it was and several other people did this there was only one that's on retail the same time that kind of tucked in they are the closing $0.60 stores, I'm really bummed because the Sam's near my office where we actually got our office enough snacks and stuff is going to close so that's going to be inconvenient and then. I saw a Wall Street analyst kind of did this analysis and the 60 Sam's stores that are closing they are some number of miles from a Costco store so ones are keeping open don't seem to have much competition but the ones, they're closing you know the list the target clickbait title of this was like Costco's crushing Sam's so they went to an analysis so I thought that was. Pretty interesting that you know Walmart's not used to losing so if they are losing to Costco that that's pretty fascinating. Jason: [46:21] Yeah for sure and it I mean. I think Sam's Club stores can do very well but but Costco is almost a unicorn in their retail performance I mean Walmart the largest retailer in the US they have like over 4,000 stores in the US, Costco to the second largest retailer in the US they have like 200 stores. Did that yesterday they really have that model down like and I'm not sure that the average Costco I mean it has ever underperform the average Sam's Club store which doesn't mean Sam's doesn't do well but. But your point like they're probably not doing well in the the head-to-head battles. Scot: [46:59] I don't know enough about the cause for maybe we can have a an analyst on. Kind of Enlighten us on that cuz I wonder how cuz there's BJ's as well right. I think I've seen the same for sales for BJ's are doing pretty well so. I believe in this report said Sam's same-store sales are doing well but it must be kind of A Tale of Two Cities the ones that could be with Costco or doing poorly in the ones that aren't are doing well for them to close these it would close them if they're doing awesome. Jason: [47:23] Yeah but I do think it's part of this way speaker thing we're over stored in the u.s. populations are moving so you open the store. And you know it to cater to a Suburban population and then those folks move in the suburbs back to the city centers and where your store should be should be different so it's it, clothing stores is not on is often a sign of a healthy retailer and I think Walmart's the perfect example like, diprimas clicking on all cylinders checking all the boxes and so it's you know it's it's unpleasant for those employees but it's probably a good time for investors to see someone having a good financial performance and still. Being willing Nicole that hurt and kind of move away from some of the most profitable pieces of the Enterprise, I think another one that. We it was interesting that she was Target in one of the stats we saw their this is been progressively bigger stat. We seen every year but Target is not saying it's 70% of all their online orders are being the film in some way from the store so we talked about this for a long time it's when the best ways are brick-and-mortar retailers can compete with Amazon is, you should from that store you get to ship USPS and get it there in one day for much cheaper rate than you pay UPS or FedEx from. Scot: [48:39] Yeah I think target actually exceeded expectations and raised so that's good at the stocks been doing well. I'm in that same vein we mentioned earlier around that grocery store topic but Kohl's they came out with 7% same-store sales for holiday and is reminder to listeners we had Kevin Manziel on the show year ago now is it wasn't so it must be. Jason: [48:59] What was the shop talk. Scot: [49:00] Shop talk so about 8 months ago and he was talking about their strategy and it looks like it played out pretty well and he's announced his resigning and handing over the reins to a new CEO and. She will start I think in July August time frame so always good to have a really nice hand over there when things are going well. Jason: [49:19] Absolutely I think another one that sort of was not rising in a, in a rising tide is unfortunately Macy so I think they were down in the like two and a half percent and they've announced another big round of store closures so I think they're closing like another hundred stores. Scot: [49:38] In the last one I saw it is Lululemon they were up 13% this interesting cuz everyone is is gunning for these guys to everyone has come out with their own athleisure line, babe copied everything Lululemon's doing and they cannot seem to slow these guys down there they're so. The brand has an affinity with folks especially Millennial females they have that experience with yoga classes in the store and none of the other athletes are guys are really able to keep up with them, and I think this is I'm not an expert on Nike and Under Armour but they're both under pressure, things that Turtle Dave Dave kind of gone all in on some of this athleisure stuff specifically around yoga thinking they could take okasa market share from Lululemon but Lululemon's hanging in there. Interesting example of a david-and-goliath where where David is winning. Jason: [50:30] Exactly and in some ways maybe starting to look more like glass. Yeah so it's going to be an interesting one to watch people have been kind of predicting the end of this athleisure trend for a long time. Never seems to come so it'll be interesting to see whether. Whether you know it is a cycle that gets broken and and is athleisure Trend ever doesn't it'll be super interesting and see if Lululemon can leverage all that. Great customer intimacy they have to pick up on the next train or whether they're there at least you're only, it's got one of my New Year's resolution was to do a little shorter shows and so it is happen again we've used up all our a lot of time we certainly are grateful for her listeners taking the time to listen to the show, if you enjoyed it we really appreciate a 5-star review on iTunes I mention that we're going to be visiting Apple this weekend they could they could be very angry with us so we need to get lots of review so they, saying they're good racist and if you want to have any conversation about any of the topics on today shows we'd love to hear from you on Facebook. Scot: [51:35] Yep thanks I wanted to join us. Jason: [51:37] Until next time happy commercing.

EP086 - Dorel Juvenile Group Bob Land and Jamie Dooley   An interview with Bob Land is the VP Consumer Engagement and Jamie Dooley is the Head of E-Commerce at Dorel Juvenile Group.  Dorel Juvenile is the world’s leading juvenile product company and has over 11k employees globally. They have a portfolio of 11 brands include Cosco and Safety 1st. In this interview, we discuss Dorel's to to market strategy, including: Wholesale Direct to Consumer Marketplaces Physical/Popup DTC B2B In particular Dorel is a hybrid seller (1p and 3p) on both Walmart and Amazon's marketplaces. Jamie will be one of the speakers at "Amazon & Me" an all day workshop on Tuesday June 6th at IRCE, hosted by Scot Wingo. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 86 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday May 24, 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Amazon Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded live on Wednesday May 24th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners you know Jason some of the feedback we get says that some of our jokes especially yours are juvenile so we have perfect guest for the show tonight. Jason: [0:52] Internist that that feedback is mostly from my family. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [0:57] Guy cuz they get to live with them all the time so tonight we're really excited to have two members of the door old juvenile group e-commerce team dorel juvenile is the world's leading juvenile Product Company and has over 11,000 employees globally they have a portfolio of 11 Brands including Costco and safety first, we're excited to have on the show Bob land who is the VP of consumer engagement and Jamie Dooley who is the head of eCommerce welcome Bob and Jamie hello. Alright cool so what what part of the world I'm in Raleigh Jason is back home in Sunny Chicago where you guys at. [1:36] I am in the Backwoods of Southern New Hampshire and put our company is actually headquartered in the u.s. in Foxboro Massachusetts probably about 15 minutes away from the. [1:51] And I'm in the back words of Boston okay so the first Speaker there was Jamie and II was Bob for those either don't recognize their voices. Jason: [2:01] We always like to start the show by getting a rundown on your background and how you got to your current rolls and maybe a little bit about what the the scope of your role is now so Bob can we start with you. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [2:14] Sure sure I'm I'm kind of the the old man of eCommerce it seems I started off in eCommerce in 1995. Not sure how often you you hear that but I work a Polaroid and I was a product manager on it, try to call to make a print you know those machines that you going to a CVS or Walgreens and you can't hear photo, we did that 95 and we use the internet to you know send some photos to the Internet so it was. Kind of an early beginning I went to Rensselaer which is a little College in Upstate New York engineering school lunch lids.com and 1999 and if you know those guys. Happy tailor. And then cvs.com for CVS Pharmacy in around 2001 when I got into the affiliate space know if you guys are the affiliate world like I do but I started. And a Commission Junction. And then it starts from 2006 all the way to 2011 where we got bought by rapper 10 which is a pretty large e-commerce player out of Japan. That's why I stayed for a while on their leadership team and then found dorel that's our video ad from our new CEO recruiting people for a digital transformation so I've been there been here ever since. Jason: [3:44] End and how long is ever since when did you get to dorel. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [3:47] The three and a half years but then e-commerce terms is talking about sweat 7 is that the multiplier. Jason: [3:54] I think so so you're off probation then. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [3:59] Double secret probation. Jason: [4:02] Awesome in Jamie what about yourself. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [4:06] Well I'm just tangentially my probation officer I need to call him after this process will that I'm a giraffe. Jason: [4:14] That was one of the conditions of your parole if I'm not mistaken. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [4:18] And absolutely was so so I went to MIT for graduate school. Jason: [4:24] That's like a liberal arts college in the in the Northeast. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [4:29] Yes yeah it's a little small school and I actually I was one of the only people in my graduating class but actually went into retail so I would I got recruited out of. Alabama teacher to go work at the Bayern brick-and-mortar for target with snow very traditional Japanese e-commerce go go to MIT and then go into rock music. Has the buyer of rock CDs for for Target. And then what is a brick-and-mortar bar Provo Target in and Staples and then ultimately ended up back here in New England working for Wayfair where I was. The director category management for a number of categories including the baby categories that I was really my first entree into the baby space as well as toys and game rooms. And ultimately went to Dunkin brands or Dunkin Donuts headquarters where I where I live retail merchandising in eCommerce and then more recently was the, director of e-commerce merchandising strategy for Toys R us.com and babiesrus.com. Most recently I've been at the route for about a year-and-a-half now and I'm head of e-commerce where. I actually came to the company name because Bob and the leadership team and painted a really exciting vision for. Transforming what was already a very well-known company in the baby's face into more e-commerce focused and digital organization. [5:59] Very excited to a part of that change over the last year we made him take the Kool-Aid right off the bat. I was keeping track and I think between the two of you we've got 480 of the IR 500 so congratulations on that careers. Pretty robust set of companies to work for thank you. [6:23] So what's up let's kind of started a high-level and kind of work our way in peel the onion is at work so, you know you guys were at retailers before and a vendor there and now you're at Brand so tell us a little bit how do you guys think about channels and then just just, macro online offline in and how, no important that is for you guys dabs about you in so that they must be pretty important and then as we know and then within the channels within online I'll pry have a follow-up so just start there. [6:58] Sure so we saw into a number of different channels and just high-level so you guys are so of the listeners and everyone understand. We were the largest manufacturer in the US of baby products that everything from strollers car seats to infant Health Products like thermometers. Safety monitors and probably the product. People probably with his the Baby on Board sign in a lot of cars that that is so when we when we think about Channel there's obviously we went to the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. We we silent appear quite online retailers as well. We also have a very strong and growing DTC Channel weather and I can talk a little bit more about you what comprises Rd to see Channel marketplaces. Start with kind of don't think of Market places around my marketplaces as part of Vita C. But if so that's probably another Channel we looking at and then we have we we have done physical stores and pop-up stores so Wickham orders is kind of our own channel. And then we have some B2B channels list. [8:18] Cool so Mom. What your summary of the scope of of online and is this kind of guys or Ground Zero or is there been some progress. [8:29] Yeah I think we've had some Dennis progress over the last probably the last year-and-a-half and in terms of not over not only just a digital transformation in the mentality of probably approach, e-commerce but from a sales perspective as well so the industry. Depending on the category were and we Runnin so many different categories and babies.com Rd Commerce penetration ranges anywhere from 10 to 50% off, 30% and we're certainly not work with a lot of our competitors haven't been at babiesrus.com and wait there to know that we're certainly at the high end of. About scale in terms of. Penetration relative to the rest of the industry and we're obviously a really big company were bitching about a billion dollars a year. E-commerce business is certainly one of our fastest growing parts of the business that work cited about that so we feel like. But you were going to really embraced the change and we continue to see things coming out of the hangout e-commerce. It's kind of nice I was allowed to go as broad as we have. In that you know we didn't when I you know only doing gay to see or only the e-commerce group, where in the space we're going to be call a consumer engagement but really it's we have the the brand marketing budget as well. We have call center we have to see via Parker places with several different groups under kind of One Umbrella. [10:06] So we from our perspective if we you know we feel that we should start selling, Autoflower call center upselling services or things like that we're absolutely he was in our Charter to do something like that so it's it's a nice bit of freedom, inside of a relatively large company do you guys operate at so we had Greg, poster on from VF Corp and they they're kind of like a sinner for e-commerce and then the brands kind of feed off of that in other places other, other kind of houses brands with talk to there's almost like independent groups that kind of run things how are you guys set up at a macro Essence macro level. [10:49] We're a core team so each one of the brands. So the five really that we operate out of out of Foxboro and. The week of the group the go-to-market team on once the NPD process the new product development process goes to a certain point we do all the launch planning for the company, read we really don't get into Channel management is probably what we draw the line with the sales team but it's really a core group. That that. Works to really extend the the brand marketing so the brand teams really only get to work on product development. And core brand development and then we really do the activation now part of the brand. Jason: [11:38] Got interesting you know, I'm always fascinated I have some clients that are brands that very robust direct-to-consumer business is and then I also have some some brands that are super early in their DTC journey and those guys are always terrified about the channel conflict issues, I'm sort of assuming by how robust your your channels are that that that if there were any concerns those concerns of sort of played out in the past is that the fair characterization or is that still something you have to Grapple with. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [12:15] I think we still we absolutely grapple with it everyday I wouldn't say. It's it's a huge obstacle for trying to run eCommerce but we're certainly mindful of. Are we evolve our Retail Partners as we're managing to the Sea, and I think we've approached it where we we don't we don't want to actively compete with our major Retail Partners uncertainly in my career taking Amazon honest is never a good idea. Walmart or any of the other. Major retailers video into our goal is to provide regardless of the channel to customer purchased directly. Rr1 PV terrorism cell, on the marketplace is and then our call centers in P2P our goal is ultimately to have all those channels work worth in Harmony and not trying to shoot against each other first. Jason: [13:17] Ghana and I'm assuming you're sort of Court digital team isn't just a supporting the DTC so you're probably also providing content and assets and stuff for your for your 1p partners for their own e-commerce efforts is that. Is that true. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [13:32] Yeah that's absolutely true I think that's part of how we tried to, just saw the vision to our Retail Partners and throughout the organization is that what we do from a contract perspective or everything that we're doing to enhance the customer experience online is certain Morrison. Healthy overall company attorney just to this point it's taking awhile No 3 or 4 years now. It's like a data Liberation movement had 7 or 8 products, catalogs you can spread all over the world all these different databases and recently called salsify a kind of bring it all together. And really once we took moves like that and really didn't rely on Legacy systems anymore of your completely rebuilt the marketing technology Stacks we we train the prods managers to develop, content in in you know the way that it should be developed for online so it was kind of it's getting to a point where it's a lot easier than it used to be. Wow the barriers have been really knocked down at not to say that we don't find new barriers kind of every week I'll place in front of us but I think the systems that the kind of the level of. Availity. Citizens have a really empowers everybody we would taking a lot of cost out of the business to you nobody not by giving off of these Legacy systems cell. What a nice Pivot Point here. Jason: [15:05] Yeah I find that. [15:09] Often is a cost savings for brands that you know in the old world you under nose to you or treating the same content multiple times for multiple touch points and when you're when you get those more robot systems you get better content reuse often. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [15:24] Yeah I agree absolutely we also we're spending money in the wrong places, so you don't know gone are the days we have to do $30,000 photo shoots for a single product launch as far as I'm concerned for dorel anyway. You know we do social, social photoshoot we invite you know parents who live within 30 miles of the office to bring their cute baby in for the day and we shower them with gifts and you get amazing photos out of a session like that, and you're doing consumer engagement so it's kind of my fault now. Jason: [15:56] Place very interesting we might want makes for that more but I do want to touch on something you you introduced a little earlier so Amazon is one of your Retail Partners you're selling to them 1p you're also selling on marketplaces and I'm presuming one of those marketplaces as is Amazon so you're sort of sailing, food through two methods and we often call that sort of a hybrid model is that do I have that right and if so can you can you talk our listeners through how that's work for you. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [16:31] Sure yeah and that's absolutely right yeah we are hybrid we we've sold by 1p for over a decade. 1 times and then we launched on Amazon Marketplace about a little over a year ago and it just took off and fantastic and. I think we have a really good partnership with our vendor managers on a one piece side and we're we're fortunate enough to have the Rangers for top managers on the marketplace side so I think so. Yeah meet me at some pretty wacky goals to his phone e-commerce perspective. Last year and we beat them pretty and within certainly the marketplaces were a big part of that in addition to the overall eCommerce performance. Water brands I talk to you they get really confused by this that kind of say. [17:24] Alright so I get the whole sale thing why would you have 3 piano, an answer to this. Like from from your perspective you know what was it that led you to kind of explorer that and and what are some of the levers that gives you to pull in the in the Amazon side effects. I think for us when I got hired I was hired to talidi to see and I don't think we really knew how we wanted. Focus mostly on transfer store on marketplaces physical store. [17:59] What is strong physical store on sales revenue stream in Europe. So I looked at it from a wax way and I think from from traffic perspective certainly it was it would be easiest to go after online marketplaces that was one of the. The major factors that. I thought about when we were. Trying to decide which do we focus on first focus on all them now but you only have so much resources in the beginning. I love that we have the safety net that you've done your podcast the parking lot about craft items and then we can go. A safety net for when or if Amazon decides to send to crop out items we can put them on the marketplace pretty easily and then. Our products kind of engine in six pockets and I talked about this in the session I do, and I are coming out where we will get it from A New Perspective an existing catalog perception online on one exclusives or what would call Alexander's. Accessories and then exit 17 closed. So it gives us the flexibility to. To go in and decide how we're going to approach each one of those product buckets for each one of our friends in our portfolio and gives us a lot of options for how we want to we want to drive sales for each of those. [19:31] Graco so in the early days how much skew overlap is there between 1 p and 3p a lot of the folks I've talked to they the first explorer 3p because you know they presented, 10000 skews the Amazon Amazon spot 1000, and if you would initially is a way to get the rest of their product line up there is that the case with you guys it sounds like there's a little overlap there cuz you do that safety-net kind of do listing approach. So there's absolutely no overlap on the Amazon side Amazon actually doesn't allow that so if anyone from Amazon is going to kill the lamp. Butter. What we and other and other Mark of places that does allow us and a little bit of a safety net so if the one piece side goes out of stock already. The house of a three-piece. Jason: [20:27] In just a clarifying question on the overlap. [20:33] So does that include out of stocks so if if Amazon carries ask you and they go out of stock can you sell it as 3p until they come until they make another by or or do you just stay away from those cubes entirely. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [20:48] Why I think this. If you're if you're sticking to the letter of Amazon's policy is that if Amazon carries an item or merchandise is an item on the one piece I'd you can't set that I'm up, on the three people and their algorithms actually flag, you and tell you that you don't know what to do that if it if it's a text if you have an overlapping you on the marketplace. There is any one of the other. The oversight that a lot of people have is that it's not just really one p vs 3T there's three different types of freaky and three different types of One Piece One of the types of one piece is from where. You're you're not the seller record it's not a Marketplace relationship with one. Amazon is still the seller record but it's very much like what you talked about Jason if Amazon goes out of stock it automatically defaults to a Dropship order within our warehouse. That's almost like a Marketplace you can take advantage of his laundry feeding the SI weight. Jason: [21:55] Got to and have you experimented with any vendor the field FBA stuff in your portfolio. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [22:03] Yes absolutely we actively use a PA now and we continue to work out any but the cost of shipping is one of our biggest challenges and seven e-commerce. E-commerce player and certainly you as a friend so FDA is certainly getting more expensive so we need to make sure we're watching that obviously is a very. Very powerful traffic drivers. Jason: [22:33] Yep. [22:34] And then on the one being three-peat one of the the complaints I often hear or one of the obstacles to being a hybrid seller is obviously Amazon has tools for One Piece settlers in Vendor Central and they have this Seller Central 4, for three-piece hours do you use those tools and just use them separately, play for both sides of your business or if you look at any of the sort of third-party systems that try to agregate those two tools. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [23:04] Yeah yeah so we are we both we do use both systems vendor Central and Seller Central. Anyone who is both knows that the day that you have available to you on that much more robust. Been trying to figure out how to drive more cell weather looking stop at the conversion or just all the metrics the jobs available. And was your business even on the one piece side even if you have one with the skull premium Ara. You don't have access to that kind of data so to answer your question yeah we looked at a number of third-party Data Solutions, some of them I think some of your other around previous speakers on the podcast like Lisa or Andrea, or one foot retail or friend you those are the solutions we've looked at more about the more we're about to sign a contract actually this week with one of them as you mentioned between, what size of the business in concert, cool um I know you guys are real active on Amazon advertising and we've touched on that with some pass gas but would love to hear how you guys think about it and maybe just for listeners you could recap, the I think people get kind of I know I do get confused there's all these kind of alphabet soup that gets thrown around and since your hybrid you have every, every tool available to you so maybe give a quick rundown of the tools available that's one p and 3p and then which ones you use and then would love to hear. [24:40] Any thoughts on the efficacy of those programs. [24:45] Sure so at a very high level I'm just so many different programs that Amazon has but I mean I think the paper forms from. [24:55] Formed if you were wild about nine months ago. There was just a much more defined difference between what you have available is a one piece and what you have available to speak also AMS has three different types of. Advertising on there is lots of products there's others headlines and then there is, but you only as a 3p so are you only had access to sponsor products on the MSI where is One Piece a drive axle. So from that perspective on the one beside you I talked about this even a couple of months ago and today is a one-piece so are you have just much more. Options available to you from a marketing perspective advertising perspective available. What we're hearing is that all three types of of a nice advertising are going to be available, Sellers as well so I think you're starting to see Last of Us and certainly is not about your podcast Amazon is going after the digital advertising. I wouldn't be surprised to see all options offered to post 137. On the AMG side. It's more of a branding experience if I necessarily something that's going to be easy you usually try to sell so we can use both but though. [26:32] We found that at least in the past AMG is is not have the tire off an artist is a mess with. [26:42] Contra listeners OMG is, more like banners and it kind of brand oriented advertising so CPM style advertising in AMS is more search CPC type advertising and there's there's several flavors of it with an Amazon of where things show up but that's kind of the the broad distinction there. Right and I am hearing about a lot of different beta program that there's the testing on the AMD side 30 when I getting much better be targeted. Open up advertising office again so. I think it'll be interesting to see what I am to get better I would have said, did this kind of a question and what's what's take this out of dorel just for a second cuz you guys are, you have been around that at retailers and all so do you guys think there's risk to some of the other AD companies out there you know so pretend you or at Toys R Us made as bags ample and you know I'm sure they have a huge, Google about didn't you know, seems like Amazon lose a lot more your there's the stat that always comes out that 55% of products are just started Amazon think that's a bloomreach stat but then there's also a Forester head supporting data on that up till about 2 years ago so, you know it it's kind of interesting to think you could this really be a challenge to, Google and and we're seeing broadly people really, they experimented year ago and now they're shifting budget directly out of Google Wallet over towards that side how do you guys think that's that's. [28:20] Something that could happen I do yeah I have p.m. [28:28] I'll defer to Bob with a bob has a much deeper background and digital advertising sign on them yeah I think you know. [28:39] Even just thinking about Darrell and what we've done we've really it's almost like you're shutting down our brand advertising. You know I'm pushing the money really over into Amazon just because it's almost becoming. Some of the weirdest as well. So if I say it well I'm going to do this launch a new product all that effort goes into launching that new product on Amazon with AMS. And if I'm looking sumur all the time I don't know how much they're still going, to know bloggers who have been paid to do a review on a product I think it's almost like letting the people vote so if I want a product I'm going to go to Amazon going to trust that whatever I type in, it's going to be if it's a bestseller with great reviews, how much more convincing do I need to buy that product so even some of the more considered buys I think if there's going to be a shift if it's already not know happening now. [29:44] Yeah what do you think about so I've also heard from Brands and about this common affiliate thing so what they're saying is you know, I advertise on Amazon and I thought I would get lift on Amazon and I can measure that but I'm also single lift off Amazon yeah what's your reaction to that. Oh yeah absolutely it's relatively well known about the kind of $1 for. I'll spend on Amazon equal $7 outside it varies by category so you know when baby like our products receive more like an $8 left and I was out of Amazon that's the tricky part is is. It's not that straightforward to measure you know it we're not seeing exactly those numbers so I think it takes it takes time. Jason: [30:32] Very cool so does it feel to you like that's a trend that's unique to Amazon in North America and they're just becoming a great ad platform or is it a shift to reach Arizona like we are you guys also investing in like, Walmart's equivalent which would be w/imax or or any of those sorts of things. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [30:53] That's a good question Walmart. Even even for a mess we don't use the reporting that I am s at all really we really kind of built our own reports and will do the same with W Max. And really have concentrated a lot of the other dollars right there because with guys like Triad and hooklogic can come your other choices on the on the other retailers website they've always. Kind of obscured the Bry. To some degree so it's been it's been tough I'm hoping that those systems evolve a little bit more in their little bit less opaque I think they're going to have to to stay competitive. Jason: [31:46] Dangerous a wino there's a bunch of wmx salespeople listening right now so I'm sure you'll be hearing from them from the. [31:53] What will will will be that point home that that transparency and access to data is one literally one of the impediment with folks spending money with you. [32:04] So Scot, Jamie, Bob: [32:06] I think you're pointing that out that's one of them I think she was the thing through the the challenges with. Madison mdfl now it's won the data for the day is just not easy to come by and it's not a Preposterous some of the more that was advertising Channel. Second is mobile mobile experience and desktop experience of War. I don't know that anyone including Amazon it's real practical. Mobile experience. Jason: [32:44] Yeah which is interesting because you would you would certainly think like it is hard to believe there's a technical or skills and pediment keeping someone like Amazon from building. [32:54] A great advertising platform and great report and a great mobile experiences. [33:02] Just feels like they haven't got around to it yet but hopefully I don't know if you know this but Jeff is a big listener the show so you know this could be triggering an email as we speak. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [33:12] Does a Jeff email happening right now. Jason: [33:18] Should be on the advertising are there any other considerations that you guys think about it in terms of maximizing your your results on Amazon, I noticed I and I should have mentioned this up front I've got a 20 month old in the house so I'm the big user of your products. [33:36] You've dramatically slowed down my midnight snacking because like all the the safety first products in my kitchen make it much harder to get food out in the dark. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [33:46] But thankfully that's pressure machine isn't protected. Jason: [33:52] Exactly just just a product idea for you is some LED lighting and some of that stuff might be helpful. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [33:58] Will cost us a penny more to make them glow in the dark. Jason: [34:02] Exactly. [34:04] But I have noticed you guys are well represented in all the different Amazon programs and so you know you have a lot of add-on products I also noticed you guys have some Amazon Choice status, product so you know I guess I'd be, pictures do you overly like try to achieve those things with how are you managing your portfolio of all those those sorts of things. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [34:29] Where are the where walkie to have it I wouldn't say that we we were able to. Tell you exactly how we go out I mean certainly bourbon is a profitability quotient. Turn on internet with your private label Amazon. All I got for those were going to answer your initial question as we look at managing the business there's just. What I've been talking about the last year-and-a-half if we break eCommerce and Jeff's into seven centers of excellence in, Amazon a particular kind of fall into one of those centers of excellence be we live and breathe it's almost like a religion where. One of them is marketing and another is information technology Partnerships and people. So each one of those are you looking at and we break it down from quarter-to-quarter. From year to year and suddenly we have a now next future plan for all of them. Respective definition. Which one of the bed say from Amazon perspective we talked about the marketing operations is probably just fine. [36:00] All the all the other ways and everything dipped Amazon train their customers to a second term to find shipping Apartments. Jason: [36:09] Got it in, what you don't want to do things that we haven't talked about that scares a lot of people per ticket on the one piece side of Amazon his pricing like do you hit is that been an issue for you do you have a strategy or any any pricing tips for, for folks that are going to put their products on Amazon's platform. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [36:32] Bob's Bob's advice to me in the beginning with don't lose money so I try to price my products while products not to lose money before 1. Jason: [36:45] Can you make it up in volume if you do. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [36:47] Exactly. My kids are starting to do the new math so maybe you can but I'm old school so I don't know how to turn it negative. [37:03] We know one of the things we talked about a lot and you mentioned it earlier when you talked about third-party data switch. Is the we say the date is more important and we're crossing with your friends as much data systemically to make the decision we have map policies for a number of our friends that certainly helps. I mean it's the Wild Wild West when you don't have enough policies so the constant challenge to take a look at and what's going on dynamically in the forecast. Pricing stand for in where would possibly looking at ways to differentiate. I think we're going to see a boom in brands that traditionally may have not looked at map policies. Just because of what you know Walmart continues to be priced leader you know Amazon will continue to follow but now you got Target saying they want to be a price leader to and in others. So in that kind of environment as a manufacturer brand gear you know it's like maybe I would have traditionally had a map policy on my premium products only but that's going to change use my. Roll out of my policy for my mqp in Opp lines as well just took for protection. Jason: [38:23] Wow yeah that is interesting I could totally see that there are a bunch of other 3p sellers that sell your products on Amazon I'm assuming most of those are authorized sellers is that. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [38:38] I would say it's a mix so. That's not the challenge is simply word been a lot of great partners that you sell in the marketplace and then there are some that. Yeah we're not exactly sure how they so I think we're starting to see and evolution are not just Amazon Marketplace but, I'm Walmart's and others where it's harder to be that Arbitrage type of cell are in I think we're hoping that'll help with, look at Channel management we're constantly looking at how to make sure that we have a clean Channel well only authorized stores and food in. Jason: [39:19] Yep you having to invest some significant resources in that. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [39:25] Yeah I think we are, we have already and I think we always keep trying to go for the very top. [39:36] It's much as we'd like to spend as much as we could on each of those centers of excellence and one of them is more Channel Management telephone number. Jason: [39:49] Not totally get it so another topic that comes up. Is the you know those rare occasions win you you fall out of compliance with Amazon and one way or another and the obviously the big Spector looming over everyone's head is suspensions is that. Is that coming to play for you guys at all like are there any common mistakes or tips you give to folks to avoid getting in the Amazon Penalty Box. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [40:18] Yeah I think for us we had the fear of god guitar organization did not want to. Ever end up getting suspended and no fortune. We've had just an amazing operation to approach every yes I weigh very aggressively so the shipping. 99.7%. [40:42] I need this more than just on time shipping at that way but others is a number of them that we've been fortunate to have a great class functional approach with my advice would be certainly have. A good set of. Watch all team members who are Partners in the business to understand what you're trying to do set the vision and then and check in on a very regularly. We were trying to brick-and-mortar First organization so that was a lot of the time we spent at least in the first 69 wants was just educating. A lot of people within the organization of Argo how we Commerce works and specifically how Amazon work. And I think the more communication we were able to have and then. Huge amounts of visibility to every part of the company Bob's a big believer in that class is really Champion Joe having everything. Are white dashboard in every department so they can so that we can really track you know are we are we tracking to be with shipping so how are we doing this today so I think are the Penalty Box as Bend. Great team effort and I think it starts with setting the vision for everything. That's why one of our favorite the software platforms is geckoboard. Which is Wheel of software that does one particular purpose but doesn't really really well and I want just allows you to push up. [42:16] It just allows you to creep dashboards on a monitor so I think what we did or invest heavily in the operations and consumer support. Those are two big pillars for us so even if the point where we had to sacrifice and maybe you know advertising dollars marketing dollars to really get that those two pieces of the business really humming along, and are the call center just wanted you know national award for for excellence which is really really cool in it but we had to ramp up. You know social support Amazon answers answer programs on other retailers it's really we had to, where do expand the team and be in more touch points with consumers so we think that's really going to pay off long-term. [43:08] And just one last point about suspension beyond the SOS from operational perspective there are dozens of ways you can get yourself suspended in the cellar whether it be, Aaron products at all the wild with 1p or any reviews or seller ratings or selling counterfeit products oh, I think what we had was a couple of subject matter experts. Or through all the different essays and rules and everything that Amazon foot. On on the portal to allow showers to know how to optimize a business intro we communicated that very clear with ravioli, cool so that that's been super helpful to hear, some some real world stories from you guys about how you manage Amazon and let's put a little bit and talk a little bit about Walmart so imagine you guys have a long history of selling wholesale to Walmart are you participating in the marketplace and and, I guess I would make you one of the very rare hybrid Amazon and Walmart so so curious what your doing on Walmart. [44:16] Yeah we are we are hybrid for Walmart as well we launched, probably the best possible time to launch on Walmart marketplace was in November 4th. Trey doesn't want to watch anything. But it's as if they really had fantastic resolved even before last year so really out of the cave you were very fortunate to see. Well and I think I would a little bit last year e-commerce as a team we exceeded our sales goal. But your dog and 16 by 70% and certainly Walmart marketplace was with a big part of getting us a star sailboat certainly crushing that pool. Cook any other channels marketplaces or you know anything you think that's kind of interesting that you think other brands would find kind of fascinating. [45:17] I will wear on eBay as well and we're on chat we watched on chat about a month before they got bought out so he might feel like this that had something to do. I think we're always looking at different opportunities to find what are products in front of many customers are too small. Yeah for eBay some people kind of view it as an outlet kind of a thing or other people just kind of put their main line on there and do you guys have a kind of certain part of your hot how eBay fits into the strategy. [45:53] I wouldn't say it if it will you we've completely solidified or crystallized on her arm how how how we approach eBay. I think we do have a healthy mix of a farm products as well as what we call Mike SSM ignoring clothes on eBay. Again you brought it up about Channel. Certainly there's some good extermination candy Bays doing a lot to try and improve the merchandising especially the baby category so we're we are happy to part with them and help help. Apart of that the improvement in our categories. Yeah found eBay is very good brand religion so they're there being a lot more friendly DeBrands lately and I think a lot of that has to do with how Who Came From Home Depot he can understand that Dynamic better than them folks hit that maybe didn't have that experience. [46:53] Yeah I'm a big fan of how a lot and having watched him what he did at Home Depot was when she was really impressive so I'm hoping they can do the same. What we don't want to do is just go on to any Marketplace for the sake of being there so I say that we have a crystallized our strategy but we do think very closely about know what Ridge Marketplace. What is Protonix Place Mall. It's easy to launch a new Marketplace you know as we see fit. Know if we want to try something else we can easily be up and you know I matter with no days or weeks so that it's not really a huge investment if we want to play with something which interesting is watching at Walmart marketplace evolve. Just month after Mom very interesting focused as a company and we're going to benefit from it and other reports and dashboards going to get better, it's it's an interesting year to be on Walmart marketplace that's for sure. Yes seems to be a big big area and Lori's in there swinging the bat like crazy so we'll see what kind of comes up, requires and he's an amazing guy I mean we were we were riveted. So while he certainly has a captive audience so we're definitely big fans. [48:24] So yeah funny funny story between Mark and me I interviewed with Mark at Quincy. Where do a month before they close the deal with Amazon and then we visited with Market Chad about a month before Walmart plaza Sol. I feel like I got to start taking more meetings your guy you should get out of stock options I don't know if that's, that may violate some ethics thing but that's not my problem that's your problem, what questions do you guys are in a lot of places in earlier you mentioned you have kind of six categories of products is there I know some some, brands have kind of a good they look at these channels and there's some mapping that happens where they'll say alright, Channel B I'm going to put this type of product there but not this type of product and you guys have any how do you think about that, but everything everywhere that's another valid strategy as well no I think we definitely. Where were careful when in will have a specific kind of game plan for. Access Imaging Closeouts versus completely different strategy for how we're going to approach this. Anything for my Walmart exclusive so yeah it's none of that spray and pray kind of approaches to the TV. Jason: [49:54] Got it you guys are. [49:57] I'm going to characterize you as very digitally mature for a branded manufacturer in the in the digital Spectrum in interesting Lee a lot of clients that are, very large wholesale businesses that are really just getting started on the digital side of the fence and you don't. [50:17] One of the big challenges you always run into is. [50:21] Getting an organization to change its all this institutional inertia and all these antibodies that are in the organization that fight all of these kind of new initiatives, it sounds like you got to go through that in your you're beginning and Darrell like do you have any advice for for folks that are just getting started on their Journey. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [50:45] Go ahead because I've never heard that before. I'll say that one of the reasons I came to dorel was because. And our CEO told me on a vision where they already started down that kind of mentality show. And made the investments in just a lot of the out-of-the-box thinking in terms of Technology Investments. And resources were a lot different than most of the other cpg companies and other vendor partners that I work with another retailers. Even being your 2016 at the bottom bathing how many still just trying to figure out e-commerce oh. I arrived having seen a vision that was already somewhat said I was just sort of evangelizing that Vision but I think that's the big that was the really important part of our successes. Evangelizing that Vision in getting people excited and I think in many cases this kind of Captain Obvious with a lot of people. It's almost a threat to their job so number one you have people who will get and say am I going to be out of a job in six months because of his e-commerce. Or this is 20% extra work for what it was already a very hard job so I think. I've been walkie I think we had a cross-functional team for 100 people that really jumped on board but I think we also had a really strong Vision that was able to get people energized with from the top down. [52:24] Bob Probert already established. It was a very difficult have a full head of hair too but now not so much but I think you know what we're trying to do is digital transformation from the inside, which, what is the most difficult in my opinion and in my experience and I don't recommend it it's it's just it's the long path but because you do have to you know evangelize quite a bit and you know I understand it's going to slow you down a little bit, what are the things that I'm trying to do is build a startup type of culture we're just the sense of time is is very different. So you know instead of people communicating in the email they're there now communicating and giora. Is it just a complete shift and in first I would say just get the the early adopters like you need a ring of people that get it, are we have a dining kaybern on our team that is a web Technologies guy that we just we know that we can throw anything at this guy and he's just amazing. And he can quickly integrated system or develop a database or so I think having kind of a crappy team to start with. Yeah the Band of Brothers kind of thing helps a lot but then you have to just keep converting the people who want to be converted and then kind of work your way down the curve to the people who you know they're going to be really resistant. Where I'd say we're Midway down that Journey right now. Jason: [53:54] Then cool it sounds like I don't to put words in your mouth it sounds like you had a blend of evangelizing some of the Legacy employees that were most susceptible to become part of the digital solution and then you brought in some some outside digital disruptors, is well I eat Jamie does that do I have that right and does that seem like the right approach to. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [54:21] Yeah I do I really think that one of the big mistakes is to go kind of Whole Hog you know out of the gate what one is to do almost nothing and just talk about transformation and that that's just seen companies I've been at companies that are done that. Jason: [54:36] But just to be clear that's fine as long as you're paying a consultant like sapientrazorfish while you're doing that. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [54:41] Exactly that's exactly what I say but no you know what's funny is it's almost like if I took a step back for a second the the the key. To to Our Success so far has been lots of quick wins and constant wins, so not just sitting this massive gold in a way out there but really understanding let's let's just a few small goal let's let's get all of our product data in one place so we can actually use it okay, let's go with salsify salsify not very expensive so I can put it on a credit card so it kind of scrap a system together, and then build kind of agile process ease around that and then people gravitate toward the money, now you can just follow the money if we're making the you know massive Headway and there's dollars and the dollars keep adding up people tend to say, you know I want that maybe I haven't had that in my team and I want to go on that team I want to be on the successful team so you just kind of read this internal inertia and guys like Jamie it's easy carries that flag, and people just want to follow him. Jason: [55:56] Very very cool by the way this is going to sound super cheesy I call that stair step approach The Stairway to awesomeness. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [56:04] That's exactly what it is. Jason: [56:06] Yeah they like you know you you paint that aspirational picture of where you want to get and you just can't do it in one giant big bang project so the stairway to awesomeness is the way to go. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [56:16] And if you give Jason six beers I think is the number somewhere in there 4 to 6 he will sing Stairway to Heaven but it's Stairway to awesomeness and it's it it's a thing to behold another time, yeah yeah yeah no no beer is here on the podcast this is definitely a dry podcast. Jason: [56:35] Either did I. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [56:39] So we have about five minutes for one last question and I wanted to get super high level you guys have both had great careers and in retail and Brands and digital, where do you see the future of e-commerce is it going to be no Celexa after smartphones or you feel free to kind of go, two years outer are 10 years out so just would love to hear your thoughts seven haven't seen kind of the the play out so far. [57:10] Bronco versus Bob's is probably better than mine so I don't so I think your two two things I see one or. I would have to it a little bit earlier is that I think so. [57:24] What what's available for a one piece and what's available for three people I think it's going to start to quote the gas going to start. Obviously the growth Amazon enjoying a large part of that is I think he's going to start more more. More of that consumer experience I've become more consistent on orthopedic in one piece. In particular I think about advertising and one of the gaps that I see that I think expect is probably going to happen and I hit just. You say it with artificial intelligence but I think ribbon Predictive Analytics to help. To help cpg brands in to help anyone who wants to use digital advertising or to use it for, projector for casting I think that needs to happen and I think I just it still seems really Nathan I think I see a lot of solutions out there. Don't take into account all the dozens of of sales drivers and forecast in the theaters that are need to be followers and I think they're supposed to Lucien to still feels on in the brick-and-mortar world. You're not taking into account estimated ship windows or find a drink or the dozens of things that can help to drive, sales on e-commerce side that's just don't doubt it don't get back turd in then I don't think this is any human being to make those decisions. [58:58] As they're using them to the forecast there the sales or Churchill Drive their advertising can I think it has to be any item, that's a prediction I'd see Captain someone diacetyl. [59:16] Yeah Predictive Analytics it's definitely going to be pervasive in all everything that we that we do. I worked at a company where we built our own real-time bidding engine and it's it's very complex but as computing power power gets better and this more people working on projects like that, a lot of the manual activity 72 will just gravitate toward that kind of naturally taking over I see a lot of near-term stuff. Nothing that's important where I really think that retailers will start understanding that no Prime is not a shipping program. You don't like I really do think that once other big retailers develop Prime like programs and it you know the full breath and power of a program like that fell under the sun understanding the the game. And I really I don't like I haven't seen. Seems kind of small attempts at a prime like program but nothing nothing even close to it if if it's not a shipping program what is it. [1:00:24] It's I mean it's like it's a massive loyalty program it's it's the stickiness that the. That you just can't get out of it it has unbelievable unmistakable value. I think they've gone well past the you know the yearly the annual fee for the program in terms of value at this point. I really do think that that is a massive way to build loyalty. [1:00:54] Go to know you guys are both. Deep in the world of Amazon do you think it's game over or do you think that you know just like we saw in. Bob you're old enough to remember this used to be that you know no one could be the IBM there you would just like it, people just call him up to get mainframes installed and then suddenly Microsoft took over and then it was Google and now it's Amazon you know what do you any votes on like the next Dark Horse you know is it going to be a company we've already heard of it is it some company that's like, two dudes in the garage right now that's a good one Jamie want to go first for that one. So I yeah I mean history tells us no one no company remains thought when I first Are we more than more than 50 years even if it's still around and I think she's somewhere. They're fucking a trance of Walmart's probably one where they're starting to come around they made been made my friend information. [1:01:55] I think one of the things I think about is on demand that you fart a lot of them. Disruptor obviously Amazon going after 2 but. Medium different different category next Amazon. Jason: [1:02:20] Oh that's crushing I've spent like 85 episodes trying to to get Scott's ego down and you just told him that he's the future of e-commerce crate. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [1:02:28] You're going to pay me in cash my check, what's what's amazing to me it almost seems like Amazon is is Bucking that the you know the old trend of you know IBM companies like that just kind of, really having to Pivot hard and and swallow hard to and now it major inflection points is the scale that's the thing that gets me, it's no looking at you no announcements from Target sing over going to spend a billion dollars and, supply chain up when Amazon spending well 18 billion, yeah it's just the scale is is something to really think about it how do you how does a disruptor in a two guys in that garage. Really really break into that no no I'm not saying Amazon perfect I've noticed a lotta, a lot of Kinks on a on a daily basis in the armor or chinks in the armor where they're even like my guaranteed shipping package didn't arrive in 2 days. Several times now so you know there's definitely some Growing Pains there. But I got to think it's only another giant it's got to be like a Walmart that really really can can keep up with those guys. I also since I worked at racquet and I would not discount all these guys that are overseas currently that have just been watching the market patiently. Rakuten Alibaba out there they're just massive groups that certainly have the power to and they're not known to be first movers remember. [1:04:08] They they watch and they're perfectly fine to be the second or third yeah they're the only guys that have kind of beat, Amazon Kenosha Amazon didn't do well in China and continues to be kind of like number three or four there and I don't know about Japan Amazon's done pretty well in Japan but yeah they're they're definitely rocked Anna's is still a major factor there, oh yeah oh absolutely I think probably going to the guarantee for me is the. You can check back thirty years from now I think when Bezos decides to retire a walk away that's definitely rest I mean you work at Target and, dominant really when Bob all that stuff down on that was I was really when started, start to struggle Walmart Walton and I can see the same thing no one ever gave us has to step down no disrespect to the rest of the leadership team but it's a pretty big dr. Phil. Jason: [1:05:07] I think your point that no no Empire was forever Jeff is made that point and said but what you really want to do is just make sure that your Empire outlives you. [1:05:19] Repeat the same strategy there because it has happen again we've wasted a perfectly good outside I really want to thank you guys for spending an hour with us and sharing the knowledge. Scot, Jamie, Bob: [1:05:38] Thank you thank you. Yep Bob and Jamie thanks for joining us and low plug here for Jamie and I Jamie is going to be one of my speakers at the internet retailer Conference & exhibition also known as IRC on June 6th I do a day there that's called Amazon and me where, we go pretty darn deep about these kinds of topics in a, 12 hour Extravaganza so if you're interested in that topic join us then and Jamie will be there, what's the just went through 18 decks on this whole thing so you're talking about hybrid is that right Jamie is that the topic. Yeah I'm talking about how to manage your Amazon strategy whether you're one p3p or Hut. Yep so overall strategy yes and your presentation is awesome so people are going to love it thanks guys and hope to see Jamie I'll see you there and I hope to see some listeners there. Thanks looking for toys. Jason: [1:06:36] Until next time happy commercing.

Harry talks with author A.J. Walkley about her books, Vuto and Queer Greer, her time in the Peace Corps, how America’s most benevolent agency might really just be a PR firm abroad, and tackling dark subject matter for young readers. This episode of COVERED is sponsored by: Nacht Sound Engineering: Streamline the process of delivering high-quality shows to your audience and focus on what you love. FeedPress: Blog and podcast analytics starting at $4 a month, podcast hosting starting at just $8 a month. Use promo code COVERED to get 10% off your first year. Links The Author Vuto on Amazon | Barnes & Noble Queer Greer on Amazon Choice on Amazon A.J. on Twitter Website Books Discussed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle The Giver by Lois Lowry The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult Sing You Home by Jodi Picot Download S1E12: A.J. Walkley