Podcasts about amazon whole foods

In this episode of the podcast, Mateo and John chat it up with Happy Guest co-founders Alex Husner and Kanan Whited. There's something refreshing about this guest portal and the story and psychology behind the app is entertaining and fulfilling. You're gonna want to download this one.Episode Highlights:Guest Introductions: Exciting projects ahead: Alex, a returning guest, shares her excitement about new projects and life post-Casago.First-time guest Kanan Whitehead, co-founder of Happy Guest, joins the show to discuss his journey into vacation rental tech.Kanan's Origin Story: From Amazon to Vacation Rentals: Kanan's background in scaling creativity at Amazon/Whole Foods led him into vacation rental branding and operations. His work at Airbnb led to developing tools that streamline operations for property managers, leading to the founding of Happy Guest.Why Happy Guest was created: Kanan and Alex discuss how Happy Guest was born from a desire to simplify the vacation rental guest experience. Focus on creating a seamless guest journey by improving communication, workflows, and reducing operational burdens for managers.Psychology of the Guest Journey: Happy Guest focuses on the psychology of guest interactions, creating a fun and stress-free experience for both guests and property Upsells Timing: The trend is upsells in the property management space, but upsells are most effective closer to the check-in date rather than at the time of booking.Importance of Guest Communication: Guests prefer to communicate on platforms they are comfortable with (e.g., Airbnb), and property managers should align with those preferences while collecting necessary contact details.Unified Communication: The challenge of disjointed guest communications (email, text, Airbnb messages) can make Airbnb the most consistent touchpoint. The goal is to streamline communication and keep it aligned with the guest's preferences.Gamification: Happy Guest's check-in process includes a gamified element to make it engaging for guests, inspired by the success of platforms like Hopper that have integrated fun, playful design elements.Visual Design and Branding: There is a trend towards minimalist design in tech, but Happy Guest differentiates itself with a more playful, colorful approach. The design aims to make the platform memorable and enjoyable for both property managers and guests.Guest Journey Optimization: Happy Guest emphasizes simplifying the guest journey, from booking to check-in, using technology to make the process intuitive and stress-free for both guests and property managers.Revenue Opportunities: Happy Guest offers upsells such as early check-in or other customizable add-ons. Property managers can increase revenue while saving time through automation.Streamlined Setup: The platform is quick to set up, requiring little ongoing management from hosts. Once implemented, it automates many repetitive tasks, freeing property managers to focus on other responsibilities.Consistency in Guest Experience: Inconsistent messaging and outdated terms across platforms (Airbnb, Vrbo, direct bookings) are common pain points. Happy Guest helps property managers streamline and standardize their guest communications across all platforms.No App Download Required: Happy Guest is web-based, avoiding the friction of requiring guests to download an app, which is a significant roadblock for user adoption.Event Participation: Happy Guest is involved in industry events, offering prizes and stays to encourage people to experience the platform firsthand at...

In this episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast, we delve deep into the art of customer feedback and enhancing product offerings with Jeff Turnas, Senior Vice President of Culinary at Whole Foods. As we pull back the curtains at Groceryshop 2023, Jeff unveils how Whole Foods, under his culinary strategy, navigated through the pandemic, pivoted its offerings, and embraced the transformative Amazon partnership. Drawing from nearly three decades of experience and expertise in cities like New York, Boston, and London, Jeff shares invaluable insights into achieving elevated customer satisfaction, the redefined grocery store experience post the Amazon-Whole Foods merger, Whole Foods' commitment to sustainability and community, and the importance of cultivating a memorable in-store experience. Dive into the cultural shifts within Whole Foods post-acquisition and understand the larger implications for the grocery retail industry. Resources: Connect with RETHINK Retail on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/rethink-industries/ For the latest retail insights, visit: www.rethink.industries Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to our channel and give us a 5-star rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Goodpods! - - - - - - This RETHINK Retail Podcast episode was captured live at Groceryshop on September 25, 2023. Hosted by Kirat Anand Produced by Gabriella Bock Research by Maggie Schwenn

Allan invites a founder and an angel investor to the ranch this week to talk about how founders and angel investors really connect. Meet Sameer Sait, former CISO at Amazon Whole Foods and now founder of BalkanID, and John Stewart, former CISO at Cisco and investor at Talons Ventures. Together, these gentlemen offer a lot about both sides of the investment story, from evaluation to the decision to work together, and what a mutually beneficial founder and angel investor relationship looks like.   Timecoded Guide: [01:23] Exploring John and Sameer's backgrounds in cyber and how they developed their own unique founder-angel investor connection [04:53] Understanding the triggering aspects that caused someone like John to become an angel investor in BalkanID and how BalkanID selected their investors [08:20] Delving into the uniqueness of different founder-investor relationships and how John (vs other BalkanID investors) makes his impact on Sameer's work as a founder [13:30] Giving expert advice and explaining lessons learned in founding your first company and in investing in startups  [22:12] Exploring how other experiences in life, outside of cybersecurity and investing, has informed John and Sameer's work with BalkanID and with solving cyber issues   Sponsor Links: Thank you to our sponsor Axonius for bringing this episode to life! Life is complex. But it's not about avoiding challenges or fearing failure. Just ask Simone Biles — the greatest gymnast of all time. Want to learn more about how Simone controls complexity? Watch her video at axonius.com/simone.   What inspired you to become a founder of BalkanID, Sameer? As the former CISO of Amazon Whole Foods and an investor at numerous cybersecurity companies, Sameer has a great resume to show off. However, his work with BalkanID offered him the opportunity to be a founder, something that Sameer had never done before. When asked what inspired him to be a first-time founder, he tells us that he continuously encountered the same problems over and over again, and wasn't seeing anyone coming up with the right solution. Continuing to move forward with so much at stake with this issue of entitlements felt like a missed opportunity, and with the right investors and co-founders on his side, BalkanID was born. “I knew that we could do better, right? And I knew the existing solutions were not scaling. And I think the last inspiration was really finding the right co-founders to go at this with. That was the biggest inspiration of all.” - Sameer Sait   John, what were the triggering factors that made you decide to invest in BalkanID?  Just like Sameer, John has some incredible experience to show off in the tech world and in the investment world. But why BalkanID? A simple answer would be the connection between these two men, having met numerous times throughout their careers, developing a strong working relationship. However, John sees so much potential in BalkanID and in Sameer beyond just their work friendship. John believes that you don't invest in tech, you invest in people, and the qualities he sees in Sameer as a founder and a leader in the tech world excites him and he felt he could lend his expertise to BalkanID in a beneficial way. “Sameer is very self-aware. These things matter. He knows what he knows, he knows what he doesn't know, he's comfortable bringing in people that complement his skills and make a stronger team around him. In the end, that's why I say you bet on people, not on tech.” - John Stewart   What advice do you have for potential investors looking to get involved in startups, John? Being an investor isn't always easy, and John has made some mistakes that taught him the hard way about how to be a good investor. With a hands-on approach and now tons of projects under his belt, John is asked to give some advice to future investors. A hugely important piece of advice from John is to know your founder, know their wants and needs, and to see ahead of what their future holds. You're an investor, but it is their company, and you have to be aligned in order to produce a mutually beneficial relationship.  “As an investor, I follow out and look for all of those things. I look at how optionality is, how CEOs think, how many chances they have, what directions could they go. Are they strategically capable of looking beyond today's decision and thinking about what might happen in the future?” - John Stewart   Sameer, what advice would you give fellow founders? Despite his experiences at other companies, BalkanID is Sameer's first founding experience so far. His biggest lesson to date? Not getting caught up in the buzz and the hype. BalkanID's approach to their audience and their product has been to focus on their customer and work backwards to find their problem and their ideal solution. This takes time, and it's easy to fall into the trap of comparing your revenue, launches, products, and marketing tactics of other companies. This only hurts your brand in the long-run because you'll no longer be focused on your customer's problem.  “As an early stage, first-time entrepreneur, a part of me would get nervous. ‘Oh, my God, look what's happening out there. Oh, we're so slow.' I think of taking a step back and saying, ‘Well, we are on our journey,' right? We have supporters, we have backers, we have a real problem we're solving. The fact that other people want to solve the same problem is validation that it's a real problem.” - Sameer Sait ------------- Links: Stay in touch with Sameer Sait on LinkedIn and the BalkanID website. Stay in touch with John Stewart on LinkedIn. Follow Allan Alford on LinkedIn and Twitter Purchase a Cyber Ranch Podcast T-Shirt at the Hacker Valley Store  Continue this conversation on our Discord Listen to more from the Hacker Valley Studio and The Cyber Ranch Podcast

Halfcast 228 - VIDEO (SPOTIFY ONLY) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/avery-johnson18/message

Halfcast 228 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/avery-johnson18/message

All links and images for this episode can be found on CISO Series OK, you showed us our vulnerability. But we really don't want to fix it now. Could we just pay you off to keep quiet, and to buy us some more time to deal with this in a "not so timely" manner? This week's episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and Mike Johnson. Our guest is Sameer Sait (@sameersait), CISO, Amazon - Whole Foods. Thanks to our podcast sponsor, Code42 As organizations gradually and cautiously move out of adapt out of adapt-or-die mode into the post-pandemic era, we can expect a second phase of digital transformation: resilience building. This presents an opportunity for security teams. An opportunity to re-imagine data security. More from Code42. In this episode: What if software developers used academic citations for code acquired from outside sources? What is a reported security vulnerability doesn't get fixed? Where do you go next? What if a 3rd party app developer needs access to a file/print share over the internet? What if you receive a pitch that makes a grandiose statement like "no false positives?" Follow-up or hard pass?  

SpaceX manned flight; Huawei's rollable phone; Germany #RightToRepair; Amazon "Just Walk Out" Whole Foods; Amazon to pay college tuition? Apple event; Google H2O sustainability; WhatsApp privacy myth; "Come From Away"; Streaming this weekend    

Always Off Brand  Season 1 Ep 23 “Keyword Crazy, Amazon - Whole Foods & Brand Registry” (Pop Up Pod) 9/1/2021  Co-Hosts Summer Jubelirer & Scott Ohsman do a spontaneous pop up episode covering Keyword crazy, where people go off the rails, the Whole Foods on Amazon dilemma and why Brand Registry on Amazon can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Warning, you will learn and be entertained at the same time.  QUICKFIRE Info:   Website: https://www.quickfirenow.com/ Email the Show: info@quickfirenow.com  Talk to us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickfireproductions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickfire__/ LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/quickfire-productions-llc/about/   More Stuff Mentioned:    Amazon Keyword & Much More Tools - https://www.junglescout.com/ and https://www.helium10.com/ https://massview.com/ HOSTS: Summer Jubelirer has been in digital commerce and marketing for over 15 years. After spending many years working for digital and ecommerce agencies working with multi-million dollar brands and running teams of Account Managers, she is now the Director of Ecommerce at a leading hydration brand, Hydralyte.  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/summerjubelirer/   Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 25 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/ Huge thanks to Cytrus our show theme music “Office Party” available wherever you get your music. Check them out here: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cytrusmusic Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cytrusmusic/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cytrusmusic SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VrNLN6Thj1iUMsiL4Yt5q?si=MeRsjqYfQiafl0f021kHwg APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/cytrus/1462321449   “Always Off Brand” is part of the Quickfire Podcast Network and produced by Quickfire LLC.  

In this week's episode of CISO's Secret, Cyber Security Evangelist Grant Asplund hosts   Sameer Sait, CISO at Amazon Whole FoodsAmazon Whole Foods Market, Inc. is an American multinational supermarket chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, which sells products free from hydrogenated fats and artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives

Nic Stinson who broke the video of me standing up against my corporate job and walking out comes on the podcast and we reveal who I am. We also discuss current affairs and what needs to be done to stand against this and how we will be persecuted but God is in control and will take care of us. If you like my content and would like to donate go to www.mark20podcast.com Also if you need any advice on walking out or would like to be a guest on the podcast email me mark2.0podcast@protonmail.com

Getir'in başarısının sırrı ne? Migros internetten hızlı sipariş sektörüne geç mi girdi? Gelecekte Türkiye perakende sektörünü neler bekliyor? Türkiye'de Amazon & Whole Foods işbirliğine benzer bir iş görebilir miyiz? Bütün bu konuları baştan sona konuştuk.

Biden's Business Roundtable Diversity Extravaganza, Amazon Whole Foods turkey insurance, and the McDonald's vegan distraction: the McPlant

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.American equities are set to rise, which is good news for the startup-VC world as it means that the current up-cycle will continue. But the good public market is not landing evenly, as Europe sees its VC-backed IPO tally lag the rest of the world.The biggest recent news stories in tech and venture were Alibaba's enormous Sun Art deal that echoes the Amazon-Whole Foods deal at first blush, and SpaceX's latest success. The quiet weekend could herald the return of a slower, holiday news cycle as we close in on November.On the funding front, we found three super cool startups: AiFi raised $14.5 million in a round that Crunchbase News covered. Autonomous, checkout-free stores? Count us in.Lawmatics raised a $2.5 million Seed round. The startup does vertical SaaS (CRM, marketing) for lawyers. That just sounds lucrative.And then there was Chiper, which put together a $12 million round to help build out its ecommerce service in Latin America. Investors Monashees, Kaszek Ventures, and WIND Ventures put the money up.And to close we took a look at some Q3 2020 data from CBInsights and Crunchbase News.That's all we got. The show is back in just a few days. Hugs!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.American equities are set to rise, which is good news for the startup-VC world as it means that the current up-cycle will continue. But the good public market is not landing evenly, as Europe sees its VC-backed IPO tally lag the rest of the world.The biggest recent news stories in tech and venture were Alibaba's enormous Sun Art deal that echoes the Amazon-Whole Foods deal at first blush, and SpaceX's latest success. The quiet weekend could herald the return of a slower, holiday news cycle as we close in on November.On the funding front, we found three super cool startups: AiFi raised $14.5 million in a round that Crunchbase News covered. Autonomous, checkout-free stores? Count us in.Lawmatics raised a $2.5 million Seed round. The startup does vertical SaaS (CRM, marketing) for lawyers. That just sounds lucrative.And then there was Chiper, which put together a $12 million round to help build out its ecommerce service in Latin America. Investors Monashees, Kaszek Ventures, and WIND Ventures put the money up.And to close we took a look at some Q3 2020 data from CBInsights and Crunchbase News.That's all we got. The show is back in just a few days. Hugs!

In the years before the global COVID pandemic, more and more of our jobs in the US joined the growing “gig economy” — the Bureau of Labor estimated at least 55 million US gig workers in 2017. As a massive surge for gig workers hits the US economy during lockdown and social isolation practices the pressure continues to bear down on “essential workers”, contractors, and employees of big tech companies like Amazon/Whole Foods, Instacart, Uber, Lyft, etc. — who have recently taken to the streets to shift power and demand justice.Although no single source really seems to have a grip on the true size and scope of the Gig Economy, here are some interesting stats and projections:About 36% of US workers are now involved in the gig economy (Gallop).In 2018, US independent workers spent one billion hours per week freelancing (Upwork).The gig economy is expanding three times faster than the US workforce as a whole (Forbes).If the gig economy keeps growing at its current rate, more than 50% of the US workforce will participate in it by 2027 (Wonolo)As silicon valley companies continue to shove the myths of hustle-culture down our throats, they demonstrate little evidence that they care for the working class, beyond branded lip-service to concepts of workplace empowerment, in any material ways.While tech companies and giant e-commerce businesses continue to surge their profits during a global crisis I can’t but wonder — why are the rights of their workers are on the decline? What measure’s are in place for the healthcare of their workers? Why are union-busting tactics on the rise… in the shadows of an oncoming recession?In order to get a better understanding and attempt to cut through the fog of the headlines, I sent a message to the Gig Workers Collective; “a non-profit group, led by veteran organizer Vanessa Bain, will bring the time, resources, and focus to the fight for fair pay and better treatment for all gig economy workers, from Instacart Shoppers to Lyft Drivers.”The GWC put me in touch with one of their many outspoken, active members, named Matthew Telles. Matthew is a Chicago-based gig worker and former Instacart worker who spearheaded a mis-classification lawsuit against the San Francisco based tech company which won the shoppers, the contract gig-workers for Instacart, a settlement of over $4 million dollars in 2016.In our conversation, Matthew paints a picture of the daily life of a gig worker during the coronavirus pandemic in the US and tell what’s at stake for contemporary gig workers; what the challenges, and successes can look like.I’ve included a link to the podcast episode audio and video below, and to help guide you through our conversation ere’s a brief outline of the topics we cover with Matthew:The common challenges that face solidarity and organizing labor within a freelance, contractor and gig economyWhat the first 90 days of working for Instacart / grocery deliver apps looks like and the bottoming out of payThe effects of big tech tactics like scale-hacking / growth-hackingTip baiting, pay-cuts and referral incentivesWhat the Gig Workers Collectives’ mission is and how it got startedThe alienation of labor, the relationship between gig workers, grocery delivers and the people who order the groceries in a communityHow gig workers can work cooperatively in times where they’re incentivized to compete with one anotherThe complexity and politics of giving and taking tips on apps and undercutting gig workersWhat PPE looks like for gig workers during COVID pandemic“Grocery workers are dying and Instacart isn’t doing them any favors” Matthew’s insights into health crisis and the gig economyHow we’ve been tricked by these tech companies for the sake of efficiency and the “freedom” of the gig economyWhat the future looks like: fair pay, protections for employees and contractorsAlternate models (ie. Dumpling App, etc.)What roles AI and data collective plays in stripping away democratic labor practices and how we might leverage that as the working classMatthew’s top 3 book recommendationsWithout further rambling, here’s our conversation on Picture Theory featuring Matthew Telles:

0:08 – May Day: Workers with Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, and Target are joining in one big strike and  asking shoppers to boycott to protest unsafe working conditions and unethical corporate business practices.  Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) is a staff writer at Vice, based in Brooklyn. She covers workers and the labor movement for VICE's technology desk Motherboard (@motherboard). 0:20 – Organizing workers, anti-imperialist perspectives and lessons on organizing from around the world Rachel Herzing is executive director of Center for Political Education (@Center4PE), a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. Event: Friday Night Forums: International Lessons on Organizing, presented by The Arab Resource Center. May 1st topic: Organizing Workers, Friday May 1 at 5pm PST, click here for information or to register 0:34 – Your questions on tenants rights and the May 1 Rent Strike Lupe Arreola is Executive Director of Tenants Together (@TenantsTogether). (Photo: Protest against Amazon business practices / Flickr) The post May Day: Workers with Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart and Target plan mass strike; Plus: More on Rent Strikes and organizing in the era of COVID-19 appeared first on KPFA.

'IT'S ERIK NAGEL'  Cold Open / Intro SEGMENT 01 [04:23] [QUARANTINE SHOW] NYC update, Top Gun, Mass strike for Amazon/WholeFoods and more. Xia in LA. Presidential race. Xia watches 'Jaws' for the 1st time. AFI Top 10. 'Goonies' Reunion. SNL at Home, 'Harley Quinn' animated series, 'The Consumer' products. Beyonce is overrated.  HEAR 'IT'S ERIK NAGEL' ON: IHEARTRADIO | SPOTIFY | APPLE PODCASTS | GOOGLE PODCAST | STITCHER | PANDORA | YOUTUBE FOLLOW 'IT'S ERIK NAGEL': TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | WEBSITE

Friday May 1, 2020 Amazon Whole Foods FedEx Workers to Strike

The post Workers From Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, & Shipt Speak Out on May 1st Strike appeared first on It's Going Down. On this special episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we host a round table discussion featuring essential workers who are planning May Day strike actions this Friday. Our guests include workers from Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, and Shipt. We discuss how the coronavirus crisis has played out in each workplace and how corporations have... Read Full Article

The Amazon Whole Foods Deals made every other Retailer Plan obsolete --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/Onday/support

Intro Randy discusses why he's a hypocrite that loves and hates Amazon. Hate Amazon Main Point Ring Doorbell not secure Alexa Everywhere – Just like I had mentioned a couple of weeks back is that's really the only Holiday deals that Amazon (Facebook and Google included) will offer – is their own little devices that you don't need. Hurting Brick and Mortar stores Climbing membership prices Couldn't they just allow members to customize their plans, À la carte, so I could get rid of the millionth streaming service that I don't use, Amazon Video. Or maybe even something, such as offering little enticing shipping delay incentives, such as $1 toward your actual Amazon Rewards cash. Love Amazon Saving on fuel and time. Prime Pantry – Rip off – Whole Foods – not too bad! On average, when I buy a weeks' worth of groceries, most of it is organic, and it costs around $7 in convenience for me to have the groceries picked and delivered to me within a 2-hour window. If you're having this completed during working hours, it depends how valuable that hour is to you that you're getting back. On a weekend, an hour is important to me – because maybe I could be doing something fun – or just eating on the couch, fat, while someone is bagging my groceries. I love it, still. Invested in the ecosystem. For instance, I appreciate the quality in Amazon's ability to guarantee their order and brand. Two weeks ago, I had ordered all of my groceries from Amazon/Whole Foods, and I noticed a couple of days later that some oranges were molded. I decided I'd try logging back into my amazon account and informing amazon. Not one question was asked to investigate – Rather than having to return the groceries to a “Customer Service” counter like every other grocery store on the planet, Amazon immediately credited me the $6 back to my account. If you've listed to our last episode, I mentioned how Amazon has refunded me on other perishable purchases, such as RX Bars that were as hard as a brick – no questions askes, $22 back to my card. They Invest in me too, I feel. Smile.Amazon.com allows you to donate to Organizations that have registered there. So anytime I shop there, I can support an organization, all while paying the same low price, receiving 5% off of my groceries too – It's like a 2-punch. Follow our Podcast If you're a new listener to the Manly Hanley Podcast, we would love to hear from you. Visit our website and leave a comment. While you're there, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter! Follow Randrums on twitter Like the Manley Hanley Podcast Facebook page.

In this episode, Hall welcomes Ben Jones of Skipcart. Skipcart is an on-demand last-mile delivery company. Retailers, grocers, and local businesses have the option to give their customers same day delivery by utilizing software and a crowdsourced community of drivers. Ben started out as an entrepreneur working on the service side for large companies before breaking out on his own. Skipcart grew out of the Amazon-Whole Foods acquisition, and the emerging space of grocery delivery.   Ben talks about the competition in the space, and the importance of solid technology and innovation to back up your last-mile delivery startup. Ben also discusses the effect of crowdsourcing and how it drives efficiencies in the space. Finally, Ben also touches on some of the challenges in the space, from getting drivers to adopt a gig-based income model, as well as software that maximizes the efficiency of route-planning to ensure drivers remain loyal to the company.  

Why are Amazon and Walmart putting so much weight behind a $15 an hour minimum wage? What does raising the minimum wage and strength training have in common? Find out on Common Criminal Episode 046: Amazon, Whole Foods, and Us 2 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/vincent-polcyn/support

Jack and Jason talk about the Amazon/Whole Foods bio-metric checkout, Android OS 10 and how Facebook may be changing how they show the number of 'Like's on posts

Today on Group Chat we discuss Lyft Stock, AAF could be going out of business, Nipsey Update, Fear of God Nike New Collection, the Impossible Whopper, Millennials in hoodies spend 28 million on Simpsons themed art, Endeavor IPO, Saudi Aramco, Amazon Whole Foods, Bernie Sanders and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom Wheeler: Gutenberg, Google, Darwin & Beyond (Ep. 177) Tom Wheeler joined Joe Miller to discuss Mr. Wheeler's new book 'From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future'.   Bio Chairman Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. Wheeler is a businessman, author, and was Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) from 2013 to 2017. For over four decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services. At the FCC he led the efforts that resulted in the adoption of Net Neutrality, privacy protections for consumers, and increased cybersecurity, among other policies. His chairmanship has been described as, “The most productive Commission in the history of the agency.” During the Obama-Biden Transition of 2008/09 Mr. Wheeler led activities overseeing the agencies of government dealing with science, technology, space and the arts. As an entrepreneur, he started or helped start multiple companies offering innovative cable, wireless and video communications services. He is the only person to be selected to both the Cable Television Hall of Fame and the Wireless Hall of Fame, a fact President Obama joked made him “the Bo Jackson of telecom.” Prior to being appointed Chairman of the FCC by President Obama, Wheeler was Managing Director at Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm investing in early stage Internet Protocol (IP)-based companies. He is CEO of the Shiloh Group, a strategy development and private investment company specializing in telecommunications services. He co-founded SmartBrief, the Internet’s largest curated information service for vertical markets. From 1976 to 1984 Wheeler was associated with the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) where he was President and CEO from 1979 to 1984. Following NCTA Wheeler was CEO of several high-tech companies, including the first company to offer high-speed delivery to home computers and the first digital video satellite service. From 1992 to 2004 Wheeler served as President and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA). Mr. Wheeler wrote Take Command: Leadership Lessons from the Civil War (Doubleday, 2000), and Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War (HarperCollins, 2006). His commentaries on current events have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and numerous other leading publications. Mr. Wheeler served on President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board prior to being named to the FCC. Presidents Clinton and Bush each appointed him a Trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is the former Chairman and President of the National Archives Foundation, and a former board member of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). He is a proud graduate of The Ohio State University and the recipient of its Alumni Medal. He resides in Washington, D.C. Resources Brookings Governance Studies From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future by Tom Wheeler (Brookings, 2019) Time to Fix It: Developing Rules for Internet Capitalism (Harvard: Kennedy, 2018) The Root of the Matter: Data & Duty: Rules of the New Digital Economy Should Look to Old Common Law Traditions (Harvard: Kennedy, 2018) The Supreme Court and House Democrats Breathe New Life into Net Neutrality (Brookings, 2018) Who Makes the Rules in the new gilded age? (Brookings, 2018)   News Roundup Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up big tech Senator Elizabeth Warren announced her proposal last week to reign in tech firms like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. The plan calls for potentially breaking up some mergers as well as new legislation. Senator Warren wants to break up Doubleclick and Google, Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and Whats App, and the Amazon/Whole Foods merger. Politico reported Monday that Facebook removed ads that Elizabeth Warren placed on the social network which criticized Facebook and called for its breakup. Facebook backtracked after its attempt to silence Warren backfired. Democrats announce net neutrality bill Nancy Pelosi, on behalf of Democrats, introduced a new net neutrality bill last week. The bill is two pages long and would simply reinstate the 2015 Open Internet rules. The bill’s likely to pass the House where Ds hold the majority, but it faces a more uncertain future in the Senate and getting it over the presidents desk. Trump details plan for government-owned 5G Trump’s reelection campaign is proposing a plan that would give the government control of the nation’s 5G airwaves, allowing it to lease them out to carriers on a wholesale basis. Most carriers think the plan’s unworkable. But the plan is seen as an attempt to attract rural voters with spotty internet service. Huawei sues the U.S. Chinese device manufacturer Huawei, which the U.S. government has accused of spying and violating sanctions against Iran, has now sued the U.S. government for banning the company from doing business in the U.S.  The company filed in a U.S. District Court in Plano, Texas, where the company has its U.S. headquarters. TMobile spent $195k at Trump hotel TMobile’s expenditures at Trump’s DC hotel rose sharply after the company reported that it would be seeking to acquire Sprint. Since April of last year, when the merger was announced, TMobile has spent $195,000 at the hotel. But before the merger announcement, the company said that only two employees had stayed there. The FCC paused its review of the merger last week. This is the third time the FCC has paused the 180-day shot clock, which is now on day 122. The merger review has been going on for 8 months. It’s not clear why it was paused this time. But the hotel expenditures may have had something to do with it—especially since the White House actually approved the deal. A ‘Greenbook’ for bigots Finally, The Hill reported on Monday on a new app that launched which gives users a listing of MAGA-friendly establishments—places where they’re least likely to be made fun of or harassed for wearing their red MAGA hats, or that let them carry legally-concealed weapons … check it out it’s called 63Red—great way to figure out where not to go other than Cracker Barrel. Events House E&C Committee, Comms & Tech SubComm Hearing on Legislating to Safeguard the Free and Open Internet Tues., 3/12, 11:00AM Rayburn 2322     House E&C Committee, Comms & Tech SubComm The Impact of Broadband Investments in Rural America Tues., 3/12, 2:30PM Hart, Rm. 216   ACT Voters to Policymakers: Bridging the Digital Divide Inlcudes Unlicensed Spetrum Thurs., 3/14, 9:30AM Dirksen, Rm. 562     Federal Communications Commission Monthly Meeting Friday, 3/15, 12:30-2:30 445 12th St., NW Washington, D.C.    

Amazon plans to split HQ2 to two cities Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Evenly Between Two Cities (WSJ) Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 Between Long Island City, N.Y., and Arlington, Va. (NY Times) GroceryShop Recap GroceryShop is the first year of a new show focused on disruptive trends, technologies and business models in grocery & CPG that includes both established and startup CPG brands, supermarkets, c-stores, drug stores, discount stores, ecommerce players, warehouse clubs, grocerants and non-traditional grocery retailers.  The show took place October 28-31 in Las Vegas, at the Aria Hotel and Convention Center. Jason's Activities Jason interviewed Sanjiv Mehra, co-founder and CEO EOS products for a keynote fireside chat Jason moderated a panel "Evolving CPG Retailer relationships" with Constellation Brands, e.l.f. Beauty, and Fairway Market Jason moderated a panel "Using product content to build brands" with Boston Beer Company, Chobani, and The Wonderful Company Keynotes Yael Cosset, Chief Digital Officer, The Kroger Co. Andy Katz-Mayfield, Co-Founder & CEO, Harry's Sanjiv Mehra, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, eos Products Apoorva Mehta, Founder & CEO, Instacart Chieh Huang, CEO, Boxed Nina Barton, President, Global Growth, Kraft Heinz Luke Jensen, CEO, Ocado Solutions Narayan Iyengar, SVP, Digital & eCommerce, Albertsons Companies Nick Green, Co-Founder & CEO, Thrive Market Key Themes Digital Disruption of Grocery Store picking vs. Dedicated Fulfillment Center   Startup Brands vs. New products from established Companies Private Label/Owned Brands Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 150 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, November 5th, 2018. http://jasonandscot.com 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. Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 150 being recorded on Monday November 5th 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. Jason you just recently got back from sunny and blazing hot Las Vegas Nevada for the first annual grocery store. And that's what really to see what today show is going to be is a grocery shop recap but before we jump into that we did want to cover some breaking. [1:03] Amazon news your margin is there a opportunity alright well we've been talking about this on the chauffeur about a year ago Amazon announced that they are going to look for a second headquarters that would has 50000 employees. I am if it was kind of this huge process and we're coming down to the end of it and there's two I'm confirmed reports out today, one from the Washington Post one from your times and it looks like Amazon is first of all going to split this is also not confirmed us the Wall Street Journal says Amazon's actually going to do two cities instead of one so it's kind of like HQ one and a half and hq2 and they're splitting the jobs pretty even Lisa 25,000 jobs in to eat City. The two cities that seem to be most rumored are Crystal City which is a suburb of the DC area and Northern Virginia. The other one is a suburb of New York City called Long Island City Jason what do you think about this result if it's true and how true do you think it is. Jason: [2:17] Yeah well it does sound pretty true there's a lot of rumors earlier in the week and it seem like Amazon was actively. In some cases refuting them and or scolding the leakers and they they seem completely silent about this which makes me feel like. It is on the markings pretty credible news organizations that are setting multiple sources so seems pretty credible and if it's true it. It reaffirms a lot of people's hypothesis that this was, sort of largely a marketing stunt in it it makes me feel like Seattle is actually the big winner because. Like these this would definitely would not be co-equal headquarters now that they're dividing up the jobs and I'm going to assume that that the center of gravity and most of the senior leadership are going to continue to put on in Italy live in the, in the Seattle area in this scenario. Scot: [3:18] Yeah yeah it's my Logic on this was. It never made sense to me that they could hire 50,000 people cuz to my logic is the retail part of Amazon is pretty stacked up in packs you know robots replacing humans a lot of times in the, Commerce part of Amazon so this feels like largely AWS engineers and you know it's very hard to go find 5000 much less 2000 50,000 folks that can work on AWS so so I think they started kind of come to that same conclusion the dust splitting them up and I imagine those 25,000 10 years or something. You could possibly hired that mud many AWS qualified people even in those dense text cities to to work on stuff so it'll be interesting to see how this lands. So we just wanted to cover that really quickly because it's been the source of so much speculation but we want to spend the bulk of our time tonight on grocery shop so it's Jason. I was not able to go but you went on for so how was House Las Vegas did you end up making money losing money. Jason: [4:31] I go to Las Vegas too often so I am no longer much of a wager or so I I did lose some money but I lost it spending a week in Las Vegas not at the table. Scot: [4:43] Visit your favorite Starbucks. Jason: [4:46] I did not so dedicated listeners or remember I spent like 18 days in a row in Las Vegas at the Venetian earlier this year which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy this show was at the Aria so I did not make it to the Venetian Starbucks but I I did get to reacquaint myself with a several Starbucks in the vicinity of the Aria. Scot: [5:10] Awesome so so for the the grocery shop show maybe Orient for listeners you know how this show came to be who puts it on and how did this compare to kind of shot Talk Money 20/20. Jason: [5:25] So that the show did the first year of the show is put on by the same folks. It started shoptalk and money 20/20 as you mention money 20/20 was their first show and it started at the Aria as well. And then it eventually it it felt like the show doubled in size every year and it eventually outgrew the Aria Convention Center and then had to move to the Venetian. I'm in after 3 years of growth. They actually sold the show to another event company and they started simultaneously they started the second show shop talk and Shop talk also started. At the Aria and it also doubled every year last year it outgrew the Aria and moved to the Venetian. And they this year they started to new shows or show I don't know a lot about this in the healthcare ligori and they started this show grocery shop which is all about digital grocery. [6:19] And the show started the Aria it. It felt very similar to the first year of money 20/20 or shoptalk and I mean that in a good way I feel like these guys have. Have built a pretty good template for an event so they they do a really good job of recruiting. Interesting speakers that people want to hear from and they're great digital marketers and they Market the heck out of their speakers which causes other people to want to go in network with those folks. And you know at this point kind of three or four shows into their their progression. I feel like they have a a really solid template eyes execution, did they run and you know they invite me to speak at all of them because they use caricatures of you and I feel like I'm just cost-effective because they already paid to have my character children. Scot: [7:10] I'm sure that's what it is. Jason: [7:12] Yeah I think that's my main value-add a fun fact for speakers is that they. Send you a coffee mugs with your charger on it so I have a complete collection of shop talk, money 20/20 and now grocery shop mugs that my mother-in-law has claimed so if you ever get coffee at my mother-in-law's house be prepared for the jarring image of my face and this year they upped the ante they sent us a cookie with my my characterture on the front of the cookie in frosting. Scot: [7:48] I remember I had jokingly asked one of the folks at shoptalk who does the character in the show that's her that's her most closely held Secret. Jason: [7:58] Yeah so you know what's funny about that I I believe they did say that to you if you went to an early money2020 that guy was working in a a shop a money 20/20 booth and you could stand in line to get your own character children. And eventually apparently he became so so popular and beneficial to them that they they hit him behind the scenes but like there were attendees from those first money2020 is that actually got there, their characters are drawn while they were attending the show but the big controversy among the speakers on Twitter earlier this year when the cookies went out was. Can you infect eat your own face like is that is that weird. And you know there was a lot of talk about that and I defended we solve the The Dilemma when I tweeted out a picture of my three-year-old gleefully. Diving into my face to eat it. Scot: [8:48] Eaton Trinidad face. Jason: [8:53] So more than listeners want to know about the logistics from the show but I feel like at a high level they picked a really good topic for a show I think they were hoping like a thousand people would attend in the show and they sold out the show at 2200 people which is the capacity for the the convention center they had so already. Don't be surprised if you see the show move from the Aria to the Venetian next year or I guess there is a rumor that the Aria is expanding their. Their facility so maybe maybe I'll stay in this expanded facility but it definitely felt like there there was unmet demand for folks in this industry to be able to get together and share some ideas and best practices and I feel like, a lot of people were we're excited to come people are super engaged and all the feedback I got from people on the way out of town or from from my own team after we got back was was super favorable that it was a good event and everyone wants to have a, a bigger participation next year so congratulations to the the folks at grocery shop on on doing a great job for the first year. Scot: [10:02] Awesome. Let's dig into some content first of all as mentioned you were quite busy so that I kind of thought they should have called it Jason talk so you gave the keynote and you led to panel so it was kind of go through those and sequencing and not good to some highlights of what you learned there I'll start with a keynote I saw on Twitter that a lot of people took this one picture where it looks like you were putting some lipstick on tell us about that one. Jason: [10:29] Yeah I'm a very Metropolitan dude what can I say so I feel like you're being slightly generous and calling into keynote so that it it it it was a keynote but I'm not sure I gave it so what this was a fireside chat format so I was interviewing, gentleman named Sanjeev who was one of the founders, I have this cool company that that listeners are probably familiar with that may not know called EOS products and it cos it actually is a acronym for the evolution of smooth. [11:04] And, little over 10 years ago they invented a new lip balm for women that was in this sort of round egg-shaped format in there now ubiquitous in super popular, but anyways go sort of, invented or was an early Pioneer in influencer marketing they they started out with her than affiliate program where you could earn credit and free product by getting your friends, to share EOS products on social media and back then sponsored social media was not a thing, and a bunch of celebrities sort of got in on the ACT in organically started promoting this product and so you know today the the the sort of early eye doctors of this product it was like Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian and and all these these people that would today would cost millions of dollars that they got to sort of endorse the product early which caused this product to, completely take off in Skyrocket so one of the the very first sort of. [12:15] Influencer viral product out there so it's interesting to talk to sanjiv about his. His experiences with that and you know I just got a chance to interview him and I I did in fact apply some some EOS lip balm during during the talk so I think that's maybe the tweet that you saw. Scot: [12:33] I can't right now in Las Vegas I never really need like chapstick type stuff but in Vegas I do the kisses so during dry out there. Jason: [12:41] I'm 100% with you I normally would not use lip balm but I do always bring ChapStick and like to Saint jeans credit like. Part of the genius of this product is whip-whip Bomb is predominately bought by women and all of the products were not very women-centric right and so they're all convenient form factors for you and I to put in our pocket but a lot of women's apparel doesn't have pockets and so these things go in purses and so they designed a product that was very well intentioned to live in a woman's purse which ironically makes it super inconvenient for guys until I had to smuggle it onto the stage because it would have look silly in my pocket. Scot: [13:20] Now that's kind of a healthcare item not something you'd find in a grocery store symbol surprise that's so am I done for this kind of had also kind of the drug stores in the whole thing and the healthcare are the the beauty category as well. Jason: [13:37] Yes I think they would characterize this is more Beauty than then Healthcare and it's it's sort of. Affordable impulse Beauty and so it is so like actually at the cash wrap and a lot of grocery stores and also drug stores and convenience stores and I do think there was some overlap I think that the show is primarily targeted at grocery which meant, a lot of the retailers that attended where Grocers but then equal or more attendees were brands that View Grocery as a super important Channel, and it just so happens that a lot of those brands also sell in, mass and and the convenience and Drug so you had a lot of the the Wakulla food and non-food cpgs and so yeah I definitely think that that many of the conversations and takeaways expanded Beyond pure grocery but grocery was sort of the epicenter. Scot: [14:42] Cool and then you're so you let that keynote you Fireside chatted that up and then you had a panel called a balding cpg retailer relationships that sounds pretty intense. Jason: [14:53] And so that panel was we had three panelists and they're talking all about the Dynamics of retailers and Brands and how they work together in a lot of the challenges in in the new world of digital marketing. You know how there's there's a lot of frustration on both sides retailers generally feel like. The brands are behind and aren't really ready to partner with the retailers digitally and retailers are asking for like a lot of support for e-commerce initiatives that Brands aren't always. Well prepared to meet so there was a lot of talk from the retail side about Heather they expire for the brands to sort of catch up. And on the brand side there's a lot of talk about like the lack of. Of data and transparency and and you know it it not feeling like an equal partnership on the part of retailers to this panel was a lot about best practices and started making that relationship work and so we had. Wingo on who's the VP of e-commerce at constellation Brands which is a well-known alcohol. [16:00] Manufacturer with a bunch of popular brands. The Wayne also had formerly been on the e-commerce team at Walgreens so he kind of talked about his experience at both places. We had that the VP of brand from Elf Cosmetics which is another affordable Beauty brand that kind of represented the brands perspective in this. In this a dynamic and elf 10 years ago started out as a direct-to-consumer brand then they they sort of got really popular and became like 90%. Wholesale and now they're starting to shift the balance again and then we had a retailer whose. A well-known Market in New York City called Fairway Market. Well known local chain with a bunch of like really high-end Gourmet products as well as a full. Call grocery store and so Jason is work there long time and talk about their overall perspective but today the portfolio he mainly owns is. Private brands for Fairway and so he talked about some of the unique Dynamics with partnering with brands on on exclusive products so that was. A good set of conversation in the audience that seem engaged and we got some nice feedback about that panel. Scot: [17:18] Did you get to the so we talked up private label then you started using the term owned products have to have you as a cut on what's what's what's the difference between the two. Jason: [17:31] Yeah they question if it's definitely one one of the themes at the show maybe we'll talk a little bit more about later but. [17:38] In general I call private label sort of this hundred-year-old practice of a retailer offering a a, more value oriented version of a national Brand Products what has the exact same product attributes as the national brand it just sold at a lower price point without the brand name on it, generally a hundred percent of the marketing for the product is simply the fact that it's on the Shelf next to the National brand so you get a headache you go to Walgreens to get Advil and on the Shelf next to Advil as well bupropion. [18:11] And it says right on the package compared to the active ingredient in Advil and it's a little cheaper right so to me that's private label and there's this show there's a lot of talk about private label and it's an important part of the mix for retailers in it obviously has an impact on profitability and there's there's a bunch of good reasons why private label is important but to me, the thing is getting more traction is this evolution of that idea, where retailers actually wants their own unique products that are different from the national brands in most cases the retailers using their intimacy with the customer to design a product that's in a gap that's not well met by the national Brands and in most cases retailers, have to learn all of the skills that the brands have in terms of building a brand and marketing and advertising it and so to me owned brands are these, all brands that just happened to be owned by a retailer versus private label are these sort of value-oriented alternatives to the National brand and there's a lot of talk about both of those at the show. Scot: [19:13] And then your last panel was called using product content to build brands. Jason: [19:20] Inside, what you're not getting a lot of practitioners at the show so there a lot of like directors and VPS that are trying to learn best practices and I'm both sides of the fence like one of the primary areas were Brands and retailers really have to work together is on this digital Shelf. [19:37] And so you know one of the ways this comes up most often is oh my god Amazon didn't used to be relevant in this category and now it's super relevant and. You know increasingly searches are shifting from Google the Amazon and so how are we going to get our products to show up in the Amazon search engine like they used to show up in the Google search engine. And once people find our products how are we going to get them to learn enough to decide to buy a product and send it alternative instead of the the that what we in e-commerce called that product detail page. You know brands are thinking of is the digital equivalent of their retail shelf and so there's a lot of conversation amongst friends about what the best practices are in content. For that digital shelf in the overwhelming majority of cases Brands create that content and then they syndicated to the retailer. To show up on all these various e-commerce sites and so there's. [20:32] Different retailers have different request and criterias and preferences about how to execute that content different brands have different philosophies about how much to invest in and what the best practices are so we had a really good rub us conversation about. Like what what some of the the best practices are and what some of the new ideas are and what some of the pros and cons are tough. The various approaches in investing in. This content to you notes or to build a brand in a in a world in which a lot of purchase decisions are are substantially digitally influence. Scot: [21:09] Are these guys struggle with just basic digital assets cuz you know in the traditional grocery store model them really had to provide much chaga tea or short long title or, all that kind of stuff. Jason: [21:24] Almost all of them have followed this way great like slow progression of maturity so when you're selling Oreos to Walmart like you you if it at the base level needed to provide about six attributes about the about the Oreos bike how many cookies were in the bag with the net weight of the bag was like what you know a basic description that could show up in ER P&B printing on the on the Shelf label in the store, it's always super simple and every brand new how to provide the six attributes that Walmart wanted as e-commerce really took off. You know Amazon Walmart ask for for 60 and increasingly more attributes about the product is a gluten-free is it you know does it have any allergens in it. You know what's all the nutrition information in the in the old world they just provided a picture of Ninja trition label to the store, now they have to provide all this data and is you alluded to a super important attribute is images and how many to take and what should they be pictures of, and is there any rich media going with that and you know any any comparison copy and they're off all of these. [22:29] Evolutions of best practices and so you know his you kind of alluded to, early on you know that's a Walmart sales guy like you know filling out an Excel spreadsheet and emailing it to his buyer at Walmart. And frankly in the early days not caring very much because. 99.9% of sales were happening through the the Walmart by owner in Bentonville and only you know .1% of the sales were happening on walmart.com and so you know. It's in the walmart.com guy with what he needs to go away. You know that rapidly evolved and you became a very meaningful part of sales very quickly and eventually retailers you know sort of used the, their store volume is leverage and said hey we're going to give you a shelf face in the store if you're not complying with all the the new digital content requirements we have and we want you to send the Kate ratings and reviews and want you to do all these other things inside of the kind of like. Sales guy hiring some company to fill out a spreadsheet turned into. These internal teams and centers of expertise creating all that content and and you know, buying or building the kind of tools that they would use for product information management in content syndication in all that and if I'm not mistaken I think Channel advisor plays this pretty significant role in in parts of that echo system for a lot of Brands as well. Scot: [23:51] Yep yep you know we talked about the capability to take your eCommerce products and, push me around and under the hood it's very similar to a set of capabilities 2 so those were the things you got to speak about and then did you tell if you were super busy between Starbucks runs applying lip balm and in all the stuff did you get a chance to go to any other talks or can you summarize some other things that we should know about. Jason: [24:26] I did I think I made it to all the Keynotes and I made it to as many of the other breakout sessions as I could and then of course there we're a couple of friends of the show former guess that were also with the show by tweeting a lot of the sessions and so is pretty funny a lot of times I was in one session you know trying to consume the content myself and I'm following like Michelle who's been on the show from euromonitor who is doing a fabulous job of what I've tweeting the. The session she was at and so so I feel like I got a pretty good feel for the overall show despite the fact that that. There and she'll like this there is a fair amount of fear of missing out that you're going to go to one session and it's going to. Not be what you hoped and and you'll miss some really good content in another. Scot: [25:14] Yeah, so what were the highlights. Jason: [25:17] So high level I kind of broke the show up into these for big themes and the biggest Theme by far is this overall digital disruption of grocery. That essentially you know grocery ad in pretty stagnant for. For a long time and that now digital shopping for groceries digital influencer sales in grocery and increasingly. Delivery and curbside pickup of grocery is gaining huge traction it's going to be a meaningful part of grocery I think emarketer publishing data that it's like. 1.3% of grocery sales right now or digital the grocery same stories e-commerce groceries growing at like 2%. But digital grocery is growing at like a 20% K Garceau. You in the next five years that 1.3% is going to be more like 3 or 4% of all Grocery and it's the overwhelming majority about growth in the grocery category so you know all the other themes and most of the content in the show is all about how Brands and retailers and consumers are responding to this, this digital disruption of the traditional grocery model. [26:34] So then the three sub themes under that that I felt like came up a lot is there's a lot of conversation and opinion and evolution of, the idea of how you get all the groceries into the grocery bag right so there's a lot of traditional grocers that own a bunch of stores. That you know feel like. [26:59] Sending professional employees to pick groceries off the shelf and put them in the bag is the most cost-effective model because it leverages all this fixed assets that the retail already have it leverages all their existing inventory it shares the inventory between, in-store customers and digital customers you know it's it's the Leverage is all these fixed assets that that that retailer already has and so you think about like what Walmart curbside pickup and Kroger curbside pickup are both. [27:30] Are both sort of in store picking models and you know most notably instacart which is now past like 3 billion dollars in sales is all sort of in-store picking in so a lot of traditional grocery all feel like that's the preferred model but then there's a lot of digital startups that have said actually that's super inefficient in the unit economics are really challenging there because in a traditional general merchandise e-commerce site you know an average you're lucky if you sell two or three items per order and so the amount of picking her order is pretty small but a typical grocery order might have 30 to 60 items in it and so the cost per item to pick is is a much bigger part of the overall cost. [28:19] Of an e-commerce order and paying people to walk around stores that are not efficiently assorted for Pickers but instead are designed for Discovery and browsing is really inefficient and so you you have dedicated digital Grocers like Fresh Direct or Peapod or a super successful digital Grocer in the UK called or Colorado that all have this model where they use dedicated automated. Grocery up fulfillment centers that are much more optimized for picking costs and in one interesting case ocado which is based in the UK is partnered with Kroger and they're there. [29:03] Opening fulfillment center using okada's technology and software in the US so Kroger is both doing store picking and there now piloting these microfilaments centers Albertsons which is like the second largest. Dedicated Grocer in the u.s. made a big announcement that they were launching micro fulfillment centers and they felt that that was a superior more cost-effective model in the long run so they're like, it's still early days but there's a lot of pros and cons on both sides in this whole whole conundrum of what's the efficient supply chain. You know when you're dealing with perishables and fresh and and you know cold chain and all these these products that have to be kept at. A particular temperature so that it was an interesting pros and cons from various practitioners around those picking models. So that was kind of something one sub theme to is this whole debate about. [30:02] New start-up Brands versus new products from existing brands in so you think about like a Harrys Razor which would be appear startup brand. Or a new product being launched by Kraft. And you know a lot of the buzz in the industry is all about these new digital native startup Brands we talked about a lot of them in general but there are also a lot of them that are in the grocery space. And get a lot of buzz but also in the grocery space are more products. That our new products that are either launched by big companies or. New products that are launched by companies that are intended to be sold through wholesale versus. Direct-to-consumer so you think about like Chobani yogurt for example like that emerged in quickly disrupted the industry and took a huge chunk of Dan and sales because, Dan and didn't you know jump on the Greek yogurt trans quick enough in Chobani like became a very big company. Shivani doesn't really focus on selling yogurt direct they sell it through all these grocery wholesalers. It's a lot of interesting discussions about the pros and cons there and like my big takeaway is. [31:16] All of these dedicated startups that are focused on direct to Consumer are making more Innovative products and they're iterating them faster and they're getting them out in the market and getting initial customer adoption much quicker. Then that the big brands are or than the wholesale distributed products are but all of them seem to hit this plateau and really struggled the scale. So I'm calling the the direct to Consumer startups really good at Innovation and product development and early launches, but the really challenging to scale in on the big side the products that they get to Market are doing much better and scaling and becoming much more significant in the marketplace, but in general are there's far fewer of them in there they're much slower to come to Market and there's in general that's innovation in them and so there's kind of this interesting thing that you had these two models that he. Each have their pros and cons and you know how do you kind of get the best of both worlds and is is that. Harry's launching is a direct-to-consumer brand and once they hit that plateau. You know they they shifted to today the majority of their sales are now wholesale then and so you know there's kind of some of those those conversations. Internet the third big trend is this whole private label owned Brands thing that we discussed earlier. [32:40] But I would say both of those Trends are becoming increasingly prominent in so you think about like all the Keynotes at the show and like Kroger, I have a huge private label it's the most successful, organic food brand in the US called Simple Truth and Kroger's grocery store in the US but in China Kroger's a brand because they're selling simple truth on Alibaba, in China we've talked a lot about boxed on this show which is an Innovative a retailer that started out selling wholesale Goods today a big chunk of all their sales are own products that they're developing. One of the founders of Thrive Market which is sort of a online version of Whole Foods in a way talked about. The overwhelming success of their own products and how you know they were differentiated in the marketplace so that that was a big Trend in those. You know I think of you up there all the key notes in a lot of the breakouts you did see them like pretty neatly fall into those three big trim. Scot: [33:43] How how do you nod out on jobs pick one so we talked a lot about delivery versus curbside was there any conclusive evidence on either of those. Jason: [33:55] No I think the jury is still out I will say like I have in a pretty flippantly run around saying hey the big winner is going to be curbside that the unit economics really don't work. For for home delivery for grocery in perishable and kind of the Reader's Digest on my Logic for that is. [34:16] General merchandise e-commerce is generally what we call a route based delivery like you get 300 orders you put them all in the UPS truck the guy drives to 300 addresses, and deliver them all and so you know each one of those delivery is paying for one 300 that trip. And the UPS driver could show up at your house or work any place within kind of a 10 hour window and deliver the goods and it would be no problem. And fresh and perishable if you order milk or you order ice cream. You need to be home exactly when that delivery arrive so that you can put those products in a refrigerator or freezer. And generally the way that that retailers have to do that for most of the country is that to do a point-based delivery which means a guy drive straight from the store or fulfillment center to your house, and now that delivery has to pay for 100% of that trip instead of one 300th and so, in general because of that the unit economics are much more favorable to curbside pickup. And curbside pickup is good enough from a convenient standpoint like a lot of families fine, super convenient to order their groceries digitally pick them up at their convenience maybe on the way home from soccer practice and they're stored in a climate controlled storage facility and they they get put in your trunk really efficiently. And that's a really high customer satisfaction experience for most consumers so. [35:40] Put all that together and curbside pickup is the big win and I still believe that's true but I got to express that point of you do some really smart operators that a bunch of these grocery stores, and and they're kind of feedback which I do take the heart is hey Jason you're probably mostly right, but you're actually under estimating the fact that the picking is way more expensive than the delivery and so you know that the unit economic problem is more around, if you if you have a really expensive pic of 30 or 60 items you then can't afford to do a point delivery, but that if you have a really efficient fulfillment center and you can get the picking cost down a low enough. You can put those deliveries on a refrigerated truck and you may not be able to do the the 300 deliveries that a UPS driver can make in a day but you still can make multiple deliveries, guarantee tight delivery windows in a climate control truck from a dedicated fulfillment center and so they were arguing that that you know maybe there's more. [36:47] Communities that have enough density to support delivery than I was originally thinking so I'm I'm starting to amend my thought process I think the clear answer is, that the world is going to have all of these delivery modalities sometimes you're going to want to go to the store and pick the stuff out yourself and that's going to be your preference sometimes you're going to want to leverage curbside pickup and other times you were going to want delivery and so you know good good retailers are going to have to figure out a way to support all those modality. Scot: [37:16] And then in the whole kind of digitally native vertical brand startup versus brands from existing companies where where did Jeanette Allen. Jason: [37:27] Yep that that is interesting so the it feels like then the. Digitally native brands have more Tools in their their tool belt to overcome, their deficiencies than the big brands do right now right like so you you go talk to the big cpgs and you talk about what their strategy is to infuse Innovation and have a you know a faster pace of new products and have product that are better suited to the consumer and you frankly get a lot of blank stares and you get a lot of. [38:03] Kind of the same unfulfilling answers that oh we're going to set up an innovation team or we're going to act as a venture capitalist in and go unifund a bunch of projects, but you know these big brands have just not demonstrated the ability to get much faster and get much more Innovative and these big brands that are exclusively selling through wholesale are fundamentally disintermediated from the customer so they do not have the customer preference data to use to design and execute new products very well and I I just haven't seen any of them you know really like, clearly articulated solution to some of those deficiencies whereas the the the native direct to Consumer products have the ability to take advantage of all of the strengths of the direct to Consumer space and when they get to the point where they kind of max out on the scale they can reach direct-to-consumer they they have the option to them in pivot to a a wholesale distribution model or a blended model or they're in a position to establish a reasonable valuation and get acquired by one of these big companies and so it, like you know why there are challenges on both sides it appears there's more ways to overcome the hurdles if you start out as a new digital native brand then there are if you start out inside of one of these these big brands at least least for now that's that's how it seems to me. Scot: [39:33] If I come pull the thread on that so we talked about so some of these grocery stores like Kroger creating their own private label or our own Brands but then if I'm a cpg it it seems like. That's another reason to go direct other than the channels kind of being complicated to navigate without a team so cpgs going director or is that just not happening in grocery. Jason: [39:57] No no no it so it's often discuss there's not a ton of success stories right and so usually when a cpg tells you about their direct-to-consumer 6s they're going to be telling you about a direct-to-consumer brand. [40:10] But they're all talking about it and frankly like I strongly advocated and I think you and I have talked. In general I feel like developing a direct-to-consumer capability and strategy needs to be an important part of every one of these Brands because if yeah. You you sort of look at this at the moment and you've got a bunch of brands, dinner depending on on wholesale retailers and you look at the retailers and they're they're super distressed and have them bunch of head winds their number one tactic for overcoming their head wins is in differentiating themselves from our our friends in Seattle or when I'm soon going to have to say our friends in, Seattle New York Virginia. Is to have exclusive products and have owned Brands and said the retailers and brands that used to be you know super synergistic have are increasingly becoming Frenemies or direct competitors and it and the retailers are frankly having a lot more success with that at the moment then the brands are so a bunch of retailers are becoming super successful at building Brands we talked about a couple in the groceries Facebook like. Yeah oh my God I target has one strike three brands that sold over a billion dollars in their first year none of the digital native brands that we talked about on the show have and have done that right and so retailers are getting successful at making. [41:39] The transition to build products, and in that world there is a left there's less shelf space for the brands in a world that's increasingly becoming have a winner-take-all you kind of imagine some future when. When you know we're all going to get the bulk of our purchases from. In Amazon Monopoly in North America or maybe a Amazon Walmart duopoly there's a lot less points of presents to carry that brand product and so. [42:07] That brand is going to lose all the leverage to the unit few set of aggregators at the top of the echo system on the less. They're also able to sell the wrecked unless they can build a relationship direct with the consumer even if it's not high volume and profitable in the short run. I feel like they need to develop the skills just so that they get some customer intimacy so they can start building more relevant faster, more agile products and I feel like they they need a lab to test and learn all this digital shelf content and all these digital best practices that we. Been talking about on Today Show so when they execute at Walmart, they're not just you know sending an image that they have no way to test and hoping it sells well in Walmart like far better to be able to test all that content on your own direct-to-consumer channel Gatorade it really quickly and then take a hero image that you know work since indicated to Walmart so for a variety of reasons I think that's an important a scale for cpgs to evolve and I would say they are they are doing that cautiously and slowly. Scot: [43:09] We haven't done it wouldn't be a Jason in the sky show that will Amazon and we recovered at the top of the show but I didn't see anyone from Amazon speaking on I may have missed that but sometimes these conferences it's funny people are avoiding talking about it and stay 800-pound gorilla in the room was was there a lot of Amazon talk to at least find the scenes. Jason: [43:31] Yeah so to my knowledge Amazon really didn't have a presence at the show which on the one hand isn't surprising but on the other hand I would say the founders of this show have actually been pretty decent at getting Amazon speakers to their other shows now admittedly the speaker's they get are the ones that you don't have the most vested interest in. In selling their products to the industry so not shocking that pay by Amazon is happy to go to money2020 and talk about their digital wallet right and not shocking that that the Amazon Marketplace when that used to be a separate and into the you know was was happy to go to shop talk and kind of Recruit new Sellers and things like that. [44:18] The but they did have the prime now folks I have spoke at several of the shop talk shows and so you might have thought they would be there, it would have been fascinating to hear from some of the Amazon Fresh people are now that you know that the folks responsible for the Amazon Whole Foods in a graichen in and none of them were publicly there I'm sure Amazon secretly had some people there but. Almost every conversation when you say digital disruption of grocery, everybody points to the same event that like there was a lot of talk about digital disrupting grocery but nobody nobody was personally experiencing it or nobody was very worried about it until the day that Amazon announced today, they purchased Whole Foods and that that really sort of Kick this whole. Disrupt digital disruption of grocery in a high gear and caused by you know almost all the people we saw speaking were people that got hired as a direct result of that acquisition. [45:19] Mom said they were definitely on everyone's mind even if they weren't there in 4 in in person. Scot: [45:26] Put in the other high like showing it. Jason: [45:29] I think those were the big ones it is interesting that this is one of the spaces that I like doesn't feel like Amazon has one yet and they actually, probably have some intrinsic disadvantages versus some of the other players so. I'm by no means prepared to say oh my gosh they're not going to win Amazon on the Rhone you know dabbled in in fresh fresh, for I want to say amazonfresh is like 10 years old right and never really got a ton of traction and then after they bought Whole Foods I've been really impressed by how fast. Amazon's been able to integrate a lot of their digital chops in a Whole Foods and then some test markets like the one I live in they have some really compelling Whole Foods delivery options and Whole Foods curbside pickup options which are great but the reality is Whole Foods is a tiny percentage of the whole grocery market and they've you know implemented these tests in a tiny percentage of the whole food so you know you look at the the folks that Walmart or Kroger is touching with digital grocery versus the amount of customers Amazon's touching and right now. Walmart and Kroger have a head start now I would argue Amazon the way faster more agile company than Walmart or Kroger and so you know I think we can expect to see Amazon continue to make up ground but it is always interesting to see see a market where Amazon probably has to try harder than some other folks if they want to win. [46:58] I don't know. What do you think. Scot: [47:00] It's going to be interesting so you know they are pushing the Whole Foods pretty hard I've noticed in my Prime now recently there they're kind of integrated Whole Foods delivery right in the prime now in her face which is used to separate set of inventory and yeah I think it's too early to call account Amazon out of any fight. Jason: [47:20] No no I I totally agree I'm so in and it's going to be fun to have a ringside seat to watch it all play out I will throw one other teas are out there we did get to talk to several of the friends of the show that have been on the show a number of times before and so shortly after this episodes available will have a couple episodes live from the grocery shop show and we will get some other folks perspectives on the show in the industry and so you know if you're if you're trying to figure out the the digital grocery space I would encourage you to look for those upcoming episodes as well and with that this is going to be a great place to rap because we have used up our allotted time so as always love to continue the conversation on Facebook if you have any questions or feel like we got something wrong we love to hear from you and as always if you love this show we sure would appreciate if you jump on the iTunes and give us that five star review that's the the biggest favor you can do for the show. Scot: [48:24] Awesome thanks everyone for joining us and thanks Jason for being our Jason Scott representative in the field in Las Vegas. Jason: [48:32] It's it's never as fun without you but you were that you were certainly there in spirit so hopefully next year we'll get to do it together and in total next time happy commercing.

Meiner Meinung nach gibt es drei große Beweggründe, warum ein Unternehmen ein anderes übernimmt. :) Aus dem einen Grund hat Amazon Whole Foods übernommen und aus dem anderen hat Facebook Instagram gekauft :) Warum machen Unternehmen das Alles? Das erfährst Du in dieser heutigen Podcast-Folge. :) Shownotes: Kennst Du schon meinen YouTube-Podcast? :) Einfach hier klicken: https://goo.gl/whGjAV Meine Geschenke bekommst Du hier: https://goo.gl/KadR6Z Falls Du Fragen, Anregungen oder Feedback hast, schreibe mir am besten auf Instagram: https://goo.gl/HhPLV9 Ich hoffe es gefällt Dir und Du lernst etwas neues :) Wenn Dir diese Folge gefallen hat, dann abonniere gerne diesen Podcast. :) Immer Dienstags und Freitags lade ich neue Folgen hoch, um Dir wichtiges Finanz-Wissen einfach und verständlich beizubringen, dass Du in der Schule leider nicht gelernt bekommen hast! Viel Spaß beim hören und viel finanziellen Erfolg, Dein Marko :)

-Ben’s startup philosophy, what Ben does for entrepreneurship & all the things he has dabbled in over the years.-Tech & Food. Companies out there that are using advancing food technology including the Amazon/Whole Foods relationship & what the 3 of them think of it.-Tech Fundraising. How it works and how the laws vary state for state.-Blockchain. What it is, why it could soon change our future and why Ben believes it will be the internets successor.-How Blockchain could effect the food industry by tracking food from seed to sale and everything in between. As well as many different areas Blockchain could be beneficial in including politics.-What Ben is doing with Blockchain, what other technologies he is paying attention to including Bitcoin.-Some of the other areas Ben works in including engraving & virtual reality.-Ben’s message to the world, it’s a good one!-Find out more about Ben on the web - Beta Killers - LumEngrave - DenVR

We’ve followed the career of cookbook author and op-ed columnist Mark Bittman for nearly two decades, through his How to Cook Everything series and his writing in The New York Times and other publications. In this lively interview, Mark discusses how he started writing about food (it’s a great story), reading the comments (he doesn’t), and if the Amazon–Whole Foods hookup will end up on the right, or wrong, side of history.We also speak with our current TASTE Cook In Residence Therese Nelson. She tells us about the website she founded, Black Culinary History, as well as the stories she’s been working on for TASTE, including one on the legacy of George Washington Carver.

Amazon + Whole Foods the beginning of a frictionless lifestyle

Rod and Karen discuss their first official live podcast event, Bey buys a church, Sara Jay banned from AirBnB, racist lawyer kicked out of office space, Amazon Whole Foods deal, judge overturns assisted suicide in Cali, Coffee shop won't serve racist man, That's Ya'll Man, White People News and Sword Ratchetness. Twitter: @rodimusprime @SayDatAgain @TBGWT Email: theblackguywhotips@gmail.com Blog: www.theblackguywhotips.com Voice Mail: 704-557-0186 TBGWT Live 2018: http://www.theblackguywhotips.com/live2018/

First Segment: AI Certain. Tim Kenney, CEO. AI Horse Racing allowed us to showcase the accuracy of our patent pending neural network technology.  We published the results of a several weeks of race forecast for every track, race, and horse to showcase the accuracy of those forecasts. https://youtu.be/1KEWxf-gHWs Second Segment: Computer and Technology News. Today's topics include: Cyber Security Czar Gets The Boot Youtube Looking To Change Featured Music In Videos Amazon Launches Deals For Prime Members The True Salary Of Uber Drivers Drone Made of Pizza And more! For full show notes, check out ComputerAmerica.com!

ShopTalk is an annual trade show held in Las Vegas focused on retail and e-commerce innovation.  In it's third year, it has become the fastest growing can't miss event in our industry.  This year 8,400 industry professionals attended the event (up from 5,400 last year).  The 2018 version took place March 18-21, 2018 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. There is so much content at the show, that we've divided our recap into two parts.  You can get part 1 here, in Part 2 we cover: Grocery Track - Catering to new consumer - Narayan Iyengar, Senior VP of Digital at Albertsons Glossier Keynote - Emily Weiss, CEO+Founder Amazon Keynote - Eric Broussard - VP of International Marketplaces and Retail Coach Keynote - Joshua Schulman Walmart Keynote - Mark Lore and Andy Dunn Houzz Keynote - Alon Cohen president and co-founder Google Keynote - Daniel Alegere, President, Retail and Shopping Code Commerce - Erik Nordstrom  (President of Nordstrom) and  Don Kingsborough (CEO One market) Code Commerce - Doordash - Tony Xu, CEO Code Commerce - Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway eBay Keynote - AI eBay Keynote Jan Pedersen, Chief Scientist and Scott Cutler, SVP, Americas Ascena Keynote - Ascena Keynote - David Jaffe, Chairman & CEO Boxed Keynote - Chieh Huang, CEO We've been honored to be included on a few lists of top e-commerce podcasts this week. DisruptorDaily Top 10 Retail Industry Podcasts BoldCommerce 16 Best E-commerce Podcasts of 2018 Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 122 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, March 22, 2018. http://jasonandscot.com 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. Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Thursday March 22nd 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners episode wanted to take a rare pause on the show and Pat ourselves on the back. Jason: [0:52] Let's do it my arm is breaking as I'm doing it. Scot: [0:54] Awesome, T-Rex help Pizza patting himself on the back of fun fun dinosaur fact so we have received a couple accolades on the show much to our surprise so first of all there is a site called disruptor daily and they rank podcast and different, Industries and they put the Jason Scott show on their top 10 retail industry podcast so that was exciting. And then another company called bold Commerce they put out 16 of the top e-commerce podcast books are pretty intense cuz you can tell they actually listen to all the different podcast out there, we can even put forth on that one so our goal next year is to move up the list or real happy to be placed in the top quartile there and they took three of their favorite episodes. And one of them was episode 74 with our good friend Melissa Burdick so thanks to Melissa for helping us make the list next up was. Episode 89 which was our hot take on the Whole Foods Amazon acquisition and last but not least Andrea. Like episode 83 so it's good that we before we even saw this we had have them both back on the show for a second appearance so it's good that we since those were quite popular that we've had those books back on. Jason: [2:13] Yeah you know there's a little inside baseball on the Jason Scott show there's a lot of. Jogging for the first guest to get a third appearance on the show I know it's very competitive and I'm a little worried that some violence could come into play. Scot: [2:30] The knives are out for sure really kind of trying to figure out what's going to happen there so this this is a good. Jason: [2:38] Sorry one of the important side note about the Bold Commerce list number 10 on that list was our friend Eric you didn't at ecommercefuel who's been doing a great podcast for a very long time and what was cool about that is their favorite episode of of of Andrews was an interview with me, so basically I'm the most powerful person on the list. Scot: [2:59] Absolutely I don't think anyone would disagree that. We'd like to thank our listeners for a we could not be receiving these accolades if it weren't for you guys. We always talk about it in the show so I'll put in a plug here, it definitely helps us to continue to get listeners and receive factly it's like this if you subscribe to the show so whatever your favorite podcast listening technology is be at the iTunes iOS podcast app or whatever, please make sure you subscribe that helps us with our podcast SEO rankings and definitely tell your friends. [3:37] Poop so jumping right in here and episode 122 this is so we we continued. We concluded Shock Talk yesterday and while it's still fresh in our minds we wanted update everyone on the highlights from the show so the second part of a two-part series, back and we back in episode 121 we covered the first half is kind of halftime report of what happened at shoptalk so that covered the Sunday and Monday of the four days and then here in episode 122 we're going to cover the back half for the second half of shop talk and really dive into what happened Tuesday and Wednesday. Jason why don't you kick it off with some of the first things that you attended Tuesday morning. Jason: [4:18] So I have to start with some hearsay news we were recording a podcast so I didn't get a chance to attend this, but there was a the grocery track was going on Tuesday morning and at least to me a piece of news broke in the grocery track of the VP of digital at Albertson's announced that, Albertsons would be launching a third-party Marketplace in the grocery space on their site later this year so they were they were soliciting, applications from sellers interested in being on the marketplace. Scot: [4:53] Sprinkle and dumb, I read the news report and it said something like is almost a dig at Amazon Whole Foods at there's something about those guys are some brands are leaving and Albertsons was building this Marketplace almost as a home for this works is that is that kind of. Jason: [5:11] At least partially in again I wasn't at the session so I'm kind of putting some pieces together you know as we've covered on the show little bit like there. There has been some blowback in the Whole Foods acquisition. And it's not clear whether this was driven by Amazon or this was a change that, Whole Foods was in the process of making sort of in parallel with the Amazon acquisition Whole Foods used to have a very sort of local orientation with their suppliers and so individual. [5:42] Stores could buy from suppliers suppliers could have autonomy to do their own merchandise in the store and they're welcome to come into the store and set up their own displays and do sampling and things like that. And coincidental with the Amazon acquisition. Whole Foods has moved to a much more National management of vendors are some of the small vendors have gotten kicked out some of the vendors have less control over their own stuff in the stores and as you can imagine some of the vendor community. Is a little disgruntled with that so I think weather. Weather that's you know actual discontent or whether you know that's just a mild annoyance it it certainly makes sense that a competitor like Albertsons would try to make some hey there and I think they. They mention that's one of the reasons that they that they wanted to offer a a. Marketplace alternative to Amazon in the groceries based I would also say in some ways Albertsons has been one of the more digitally aggressive. Traditional Grocers so that you know that they brought out a lot of the. Expected program GNC like expect to see like curbside pickup but you know they also made the. The hugest acquisition in the traditional grocery space they they even spent over a billion dollars on plated to have their own did you admit native meal kit service since I know you know this is. You. There's a lot of questions in my mind about how a market place for fresh would work but the. [7:15] You know I I will certainly be watching it and will cover it on the show. Scot: [7:19] Grateful I'm just excited to have more marketplaces out there this is going to be a theme of today show Ms is Mo marketplaces so, that's exciting and it'll be interesting to see you know they're what their vision of a grocery market place looks like sometimes we find retailers use the language Marketplace but really what they mean is just kind of Dropship so you know they, they use EDI and curated kind of a thing and kind of old-school mechanisms to expand their selection versus when I think of marketplace it's usually much more you know of an Amazon Marketplace, model or even an eBay where you know any brand could go to Albertsons and say Hey I want to join this Marketplace I've got this cool hip new that are no energy drink or something and want to make it available to your audience so, well I'll be eagerly watching to see what you learn about what it looks like. Jason: [8:08] Yeah yeah and I assume your strength is much deeper than mine in this bed. I suspect you agree it's not uncommon for a retailer to underestimate the complexities of running a Marketplace. Scot: [8:22] Yes absolutely. Jason: [8:23] Yep so then we wrapped up the podcast we were recording and we made it to the first keynote in the morning which was Emily Weiss who's the CEO and founder of glass CA. Garcia is a cool digitally native brand in the beauty space that has been experiencing rapid growth and gets a lot of Buzz and Emily you know strictly talked about is one of the sword. Next Generation female leaders of successful company so it was interesting to hear from her. And she talked a lot about sort of what she called the new definition of a brand. And you know this is a theme that continued with some of the other speakers and that. I've been continuing to have with some folks on Twitter you know right up to Showtime today. But there's that you know this notion of of another company no longer being in charge in the consumer being in charge and so you know Emily describe glassy a as a brand that was really designed. Around listening to the customer instead of talking to the customer until she talked a lot about how traditional. Brands when they when they you know want to be more customer-centric there their real goal is to make the customer feel like they're heard and you know she was making the point that. Making customers feel like their hood is heard is a far cry from actually hearing customers. [9:55] Answer sheet you know she thinks a lot of their you know what their goals are disingenuous and then it's much harder to build a company that's really responsive to things are hearing from customers. And that the way this manifest itself is she's like you know the days when a customer turns to an expert be that a spokesperson or brand. For product Discovery are sort of over in her mind and she thinks that you know today, with the Advent of digital in 1 to 100 and all this transparency that consumers are much more likely to turn to the their peers for product Discovery than they are to, decentralized experts and and her proofpoint for that is the 80% of all of her customers came to Glass EA based on a peer recommendation and so, that was interesting to me because it's a it's a thing that that comes up in a couple of the other presentations on on Wednesday about the role of, a brand and how important brand is in the role of of sort of spokespersons and celebrity endorsers in those sorts of things so so more to come on that. Scot: [11:01] Close confused for most of this one because where I come from we call it glossier and I was like where is the glossier person and never could find them. Jason: [11:12] Yep when you work for a French company you learn to make everything sound a little more pompous. Scot: [11:21] Then I after the glossier keynote we had Amazon and this exciting as they had to Amazon Keynotes at the show which is pretty unusual usually pretty. Turtle wish they didn't like to come to these events and really say much but at if your member in the first half we talked about the Amazon go execs they're talking about that and then here we had Eric Broussard. He is a VP of international, International marketplaces and Retail at Amazon. [11:49] And it's really interesting because you know what what Amazon has done is built over a hundred 75 Global fulfillment centers but they were very country-specific so you could load balance. [12:04] Products made in the USA Fountain Centers let's say you. You were a third party and you're using a PA and you were selling widgets and you would send those widgets in the Amazon list they saw a thousand Amazon what kind of load balance those across is fulfillment centers based on where anticipates the the local points of demand. That's really cool. [12:25] But Amazon historically hasn't had a way for you to really leverage that week we've had several customers really but their heads up against this where they wanted to expand to the UK for example and leverage app, Amazon Local UK people were like well you have to have an entity and you have to have a bank account and you have to have a tax document and you have to have insurance document and you know you have to, do you all these different things so. So really this is a program it was on spin working on for a while and you know I don't know if formally announce it here but they are, they're kind of getting a lot of details so so so see what they can do now is your product can be seamlessly sold globally across the all the hundred seventy-five phone is Interstate that's a great use cases so. [13:13] You could be a u.s. seller and then sound of Europe you can you know as you know they're really big in Indiana they have like 40 performance centers in India that's a huge Battleground for them Japan China are there now in Australia. There's rumor still be in Brazil at some point so you could really use Amazon for your Global infrastructure and. Interesting about this that gives Amazon a huge Edge is Amazon's also invested a ton of money into their catalog and you know so Dave. Unlike a Marketplace like eBay which is more freeform not and where everyone that sells an Xbox or something kind of. Describes it in their own unique way on Amazon they have this kind of golden description of. Every Xbox and whatnot and what's nice about that is it allows them to then as they going to other countries translate that that skew or that a sand once. And then now you as a seller if you match up against that and it's the same products as in like less you say France in the US you get kind of translation for free. I just kind of the punchline they're so so that's a really nice benefit of the Amazon Marketplace solution say really talked about. Kind of a six-step process where they made it, insanely easy to sell globally system as you send your inventory so whatever your country you're in and also this is all cross-country so you could be an idiot seller as well as a UK cell or whatever so whatever you said your inventory into FBA they receive it in storage. [14:44] And then it becomes Prime enabled and then Amazon you can tell Amazon what countries you want to listen to and then they will put the product into this country's and they will load balance across country so number three. The customer orders the product number for Amazon pick packs and ships they handled the front end customer service so if someone has a question about the product, eye of your delivery or anything like that they have their entire force of local folks even handle the reverse Logistics through back to the system so, pretty amazing and a lot of people questioned Amazon's got money. Don't doubt for this performance centers of the powerful things you can do when you do have that ass that you know they have to look at all the other. Companies out there no one has as many assets like this as Amazon so so you can eBay when they're doing cross-border trade. They're using and I think someone like a Pitney Bowes or something to kind of do the freight forwarding which is great and I'm sure that's a very capable thing. But it's not hundred 75 fulfillment centers it's kind of a reshipping, model versus a get it native and sell the ones he too, A2Z efficiently out on stage two examples of this one was exploding kittens if you don't know exploding kittens it's a fun card game that and. [16:06] Kittens do not get hurt in this game is Callicoon oh except the draw for is an exploding kitten that's kind of the short version of it and then. [16:14] They talked about how Amazon enabled them to essentially Go Global with you cut a five-person company that was really focused on creating a card game with witches. Pretty amazing and then they booking did that we just got very untrue real story with Phillips and Phillips talked about how they launch the product and India using the Amazon Global selling offering so what's the one thing that's interesting is. All the big guys were very much in by big eisenmann Google Facebook Amazon eBay all their talks were really geared towards. How do you say wanted Brands to kind of get on their platforms which is pretty interesting cuz you know 3 years ago it was all about Sellers and that kind of thing now. Everyone really excited about more emerging Brands and old-school Brands and how to get them on to these platforms so those are my takeaways from them. Jason: [17:05] Yeah and once I don't own that one there's a show in Las Vegas earlier in March called Prosper which is, show really targeted at Amazon sellers I did not attend but one of the news items out of that was they formally did announce this program in North America and so they like apparently it's at least formally been, announced that anyone can opt-in if you have FBA inventory in the US that they'll now will fill it in Mexico or Canada if you choose. Scot: [17:39] Sprinkle. Jason: [17:40] So it seems like it it's a real thing and I I really like I was super interested in that because it just seems. Where you like we are to be successful. This is all one in 2D versus you know the sort of complicated orchestration and multiple partners like handing off the Box between. Freight forwarders & Custom agents and all those sorts of things. Scot: [18:05] When you do that you lose things like trackability in a little details like that. Jason: [18:10] Exactly and the way the package arrives at the customer may not be the customer experience you want. [18:17] So then the next keynote was the president of coaches Joshua Schulman. And very different than the Amazon presentation is a brand presentation and coached of her listeners is going through a little bit of a change you know the parent company used to be coach when they were a single brand. In the last I think year or two years they've acquired a couple companies so they acquired. Alegria shoe manufacturer Stuart Weitzman and then last year they acquired Kate Spade and so they become sort of a house of luxury Brands and they renamed. The parent company tapestry so Josh was the president of Coach which is you know the biggest of three brands owned by tapestry. And Joshua talked a little bit about this this Big Brand Evolution that coaches just kind of completing. They over a number of years had really kind of moved from, luxury to mid-market so they they had gotten very promotional they were selling throw out of department stores that were very Promotional and a lot of people felt like the equity in the brand have greatly eroded. And so for the last you know I guess I would say 2 years coaches been making this over to effort to. Take themselves out of the discount supply chain as Joshua says is it that you know we are focused on reducing our promotional impressions. And that's it. He's probably a smart thing to do it it's both been reflected in coaches results which which have been much much more favorable this last year. [19:55] But also as we've talked a lot about this show that you know Casey well and Bob would say the retail bifurcation, but there's a lot of Market customers and you can do real well catering in them and there's a lot of Deep Discount customers and you can do really well catering to them but where you really don't want to be is the uncomfortable middle in between those two extremes, and that's kind of where coach at Swift and so they've kind of done a successful job of moving themselves back up market so so Joshua was talking a little bit about that. He did such a dress department stores which I found interesting I'm not I'm not sure that they mentioned it but Joshua is new to Kochi he became the president of coach last year and he was formerly the president of. Bergdorf Goodman which is one of the you know the the. [20:44] Kind of historic famous luxury department store so obviously you know he has a strong affinity for department stores and he shared his POV that you know department stores aren't going away there an important part of the ecosystem. And then he kind of talked about the future of the coach brand. And you know a big part of coaches future he believes is personalization so coaches rolled out a lot of capability to customize handbags on an individual basis so now from their website you can. Personalize a lot of your products and their coach owns a bunch of different stores they're starting to deploy that. Personalization capability in the stores as well so you know instead of getting the same bag as everyone else you can get a bag that's completely unique just for you. Which I do agree that I think is an important part of the evolution of all these Brands and then his last point in. North America which is coach's Home Market that you know where Promontory thought of is a handbag manufacturer and so they're they're investing a lot in. Redefining themselves as a Lifestyle brand and in that sort of a jargon for, where we're going to sell apparel and other items in addition to Handbags and he talked about markets like China where, they've been a Lifestyle brand from the beginning because they had this much broader assortment when they first went into that market and how differently the Chinese customer thinks about Coach then the the North American customer and so that that was sort of his pitch for the evolution of the brand. Scot: [22:16] Recap my favorite part of that one was Courtney Reagan I'm a big CNBC junkie and she didn't really do it here but on TV I've seen her, when you I think what happens is Sony's Executives meet these reporters and they just kind of assumed they're just general business reporters and don't know the industry Courtney has like an MBA in economics and Retail and she's been at this for for a long time and I've seen her just eviscerate Executives before I guess are good she had, Lundgren tied up in knots one time. When you just talk about the Amazon competition so I was kind of really waiting there for her to catch him in the Trap in and I think she went pretty easy on him because the cameras weren't rolling I do think you know why. What are these guys seem like they're in denial about stories it's like they won't admit that. Yeah it's a challenge or something like I got a really weird vibe from him that everything's hunky-dory Pollyanna you know stores are great brands are great and you know. I can talk doses PR or if he was like really believed it also if that was kind of you know a little concerning. Jason: [23:20] Yeah and I think there is a theme you know all of these guys came on and they're they're defending their legacy ass that's right so he's talking a lot about how important the store experience is and in addition to, you know the Wholesale stores that coach yells through coach owns a bunch of their own store so they certainly have a expensive asset there that they want the world to believe is valuable and I would argue, is valuable and it's going to come into play on some of the other teammates were going to talk about later when you know when, the CEOs have to spend a lot of their time justifying why their legacy assets are so valuable like you know it's it's it's fair to question you know if they really were that valuable they probably wouldn't have to spend a lot of their time saying they were valuable. Scot: [24:02] Yap exactly. Jason: [24:03] And by the way I randomly I happen to be sitting for that keynote next to Warren Thomas who's the other retail reporter at CNBC so that was so we were we were watching Courtney together was kind of fun. [24:17] So then the next keynote was a very good get for shoptalk it was Mark Lori that the digital president at Walmart and Andy done the, the founder of bonobos which is now a brand owned by Walmart. Scot: [24:35] Yeah this was a last-minute addition which I thought was interesting it almost kind of felt like maybe they came because they had something to say so I think we were all you really waiting on this one. Jason: [24:46] Yeah. That that probably is true and I would argue that in a way that made it so it be less interest in keynote than it might have otherwise been for me because as we've covered on this show Walmart had a very visible Miss on there, their Ecommerce growth last quarter in their their stock took a pretty significant hit as a result of that and so you know that was the 1st? Was was to, kind of talked about in justify, the the in a fact that they had something like 20 or 25% growth versus the 40% growth that folks were expecting and you know I'm really interested in and hearing him talk about that like it it did take up the bulk of, this particular a keynote and you know I would have been interested to hear a little bit more about about some other aspects but I will say, Mark's answer which seems like it's now that the corporate line there is essentially that Walmart planned, to have slower growth and Q4 and that it was sort of a retooling quarter for them you know after that had had several quarters of, a very fast growth and he kind of pointed out that look we don't give quarterly guidance we gave annual guidance and we hit our annual guidance so we don't understand why everyone was so surprised. [26:12] And I like I I think it's fair to say we're all a little cynical of that that story. Scot: [26:17] Yeah I don't know if it's because of the podcast or what not but I think. Between the two of us if I had 40 people come up and offer that they thought that was totally BS that you know the drill line was that you know nobody in retail plans for the 4th quarter to be a reach 1/4. Jason: [26:33] I think I think the the summary they're like well I think for an update they hit their annual guidance and that's all great if your plan is to have a soft fourth-quarter it's a bad plan. [26:46] So other than that there were some interesting tidbits from that presentation you know Marc reported that they're up to seventy-five million skews for sale which is you know from a couple years ago that they were in the you know couple million skews so that's. Astronomic growth I would assume the bulk of that is Marketplace and there's you know a slight bit of controversy, here in the there is a former Walmart exact it's actually suing Walmart and one of his main claims is that Walmart store to artificially inflates this number bye. By saying how many skus are in the database and not necessarily actively for sale but I think I think directionally. Walmart has added an awful lot of skews and is within an order of magnitude of of Amazon which is pretty impressive. [27:36] Is what I think Amazon's about 400 million skew something in that range. [27:42] So then he did talk about you saying we talked about a lot on the podcast which is Walmart's grocery Grocery progress then I'll have 1200 stores that do grocery pick-up and so what that means is 1200 cities where customers can order groceries. Online and I drive by the store and pick it up and you know except for those 1,200 stores you can't order fresh groceries from Walmart so. That this is this weird thing and I think the analyst had until he picked up on you. When you're talking about store sales you talk a lot about same-store sales cuz you compare apples to apples when you talk online you talk you know General growth. But now you really have this third category which is sort of. Online grocery growth which is a hybrid you can only deliver if you have a store and able to do so so there are 1,200 stores and they they expect open another thousand storms this year. You know you're my mind that has been the primary driver of their they're huge e-commerce growth and so I think they need to open a thousand or 1200 more stores this year to comp well against. Against the last year or they're going to they're going to laugh all those those grocery stores they opened last year and then and that would dramatically swell their comps. He also mentioned that they are now in 100 metros with same day delivery this is this Blended solution where I think they're using to live they're using Uber and they're letting their own employees do deliveries. So that that is interesting we we will hear about that from Target as well and then Andy talked a lot about the did you need a vertical brand which is a term he coined and and how that fits into the Walmart strategy. [29:23] I think it's Mark Lori that always uses this metaphor a bit but they talk about the the. The analogy of Walmart to Netflix and they say you know I got you. Netflix is a super successful model you can go watch a bunch of other people's movies on Netflix but increasingly, the big draw to Netflix are these first-party content that Netflix created exclusively like house of cards or Orange is the New Black and so to Andy and Mark these, did you need a vertical Brands like bonobos ModCloth are. The sort of unique videos in the in the Netflix model I don't know what they meant to but they did make an announcement that I had not. She heard before which is that all of those did you need a Brands will eventually find their way onto the jet sales platform which many of them are not right now so that would be ModCloth for example would be sold through Jets and, Martinez said the high level strategy is look where we're redefining the jet brand we're going to use jet as, the brand to win affluent Urban Millennials and you know which sort of perfectly complements the markets that the Walmart brand is really good at winning. Scot: [30:44] Couple funny things in their answer to the question of the bonobos being on chat was, your Delray Jason had gone out and search and I found like this pictures of monkeys since he couldn't find my notes they kind of lost Jason he was like so going to be a media company I don't think he understood the, metaphor of unique, original content that they were trying to make their butt but it is it's early as you know it's definitely I think it's a very valid strategy it's kind of like Prime exclusives that Amazon is doing the challenge with Walmart is, you know they've got like 8 things going on that that are pretty intense and each of their own and their e-commerce. Peace is not at a scale that Amazon is so sweet hard for them to execute well in all of this. [31:39] The warmers. Jason: [31:44] I think that was the main main adjust of the Andy and Mark show other than. Scot: [31:49] Are you crushing on Andy Dalton. Jason: [31:50] Andy Andy had some really cool slippers on that apparently where the celebrity got married in. Scot: [31:56] Took a picture, I guess my picture that was circling this fine then up next was house in the house Houzz, and houses really cool story so I actually know one of the founders his name is Alana and he was from 2001 to 2010 he ran a bunch of engineering groups at eBay and his wife's name is I'll probably put you this but, Adi tatarko. [32:26] And they are from Israel and they moved to Silicon Valley and by house probably for a bazillion dollars and they were they were working on refurbishing the house I think about. 8 years ago now and you know what they found was there was no. Great Ecommerce experience for Furnishing your house so house is borns they built house is a way it's kind of a it started out as really a place where. Counting is a super vertical Pinterest so. If you did a project where you refurbish your kitchen for example and you wanted and a designer wanted to maybe kind of get involved it was coming designer Marketplace so you could get ideas from other people could have done it and then also designers and an end designers like, because it was a way for them to acquire customers and that's how they were kind of monetizing it. Then what happened is there so many do-it-yourselfers that would say hey I really like how Jason and his wife did their kitchen. I want to and I can see this faucet in there that I really like and this countertop but I want to know exactly what it is and how to go buy it. So there's this disconnect between the, products you would see in these kitchens in other rooms are being refurbished and ability to buy them so they created a product Marketplace on there in full disclosure we've been a partner of there is that channel visor for a very long time, I used to be more of a paid less than kind of moved to a pure market place we can buy them all and house and they've been a great partner verse so it was cool to hear the story I've never heard the story from kind of that. [34:00] That start to where they are now and here they are today they fit 10 million items on the marketplace they've got over 20,000 Sellers and 40 million monthly active users so you know it's pretty pretty neat that they kind of just. Really solve the problem and we're able to build a couple different ways of monetizing that on there he was interviewed by Alfred Lynn who was one of the. Jason: [34:28] Yeah that's a good question yeah I think he was there at the beginning I do not know if he's officially a founder or not. Scot: [34:34] Yep but he left free shortly after the Amazon acquisition and Joint Sequoia which is one of the. List of blue chips are in the Bay Area so a lot of his questions I wasn't sure the retailers were rocking on cuz he's talking about MARC station strategies, yeah he's like going kind of deep into the VC language they're so it's kind of interesting and then, the last thing I thought was interesting was they did talk about you know, they are so this is really big right now in the home category, where you know you can not eat you can use augmented reality to look at a room and being a piece of furniture or a faucet or something like that or maybe in the cabinet you can kind of get a feel for how that's been looking so they have a million skus that are when I call a are enabled and, this was one that will make sure that we caught that, it improves your conversion 11 x when when people are using they are to look at an item, so in my calculus I kind of said well that was conversion rate something like two to three percent so what is that like 33%. [35:39] What your kiss makes sense cuz people going to be pretty far down the funnel if you're going to be like okay I'm going to go home, I'm going to fire up the say our thing and I'm going to drop that widget that piece of furniture whatever it is into my room to see if it's it's so it's so I guess it does kind of like a really big bump to me. [35:57] Does that jive with you. Jason: [35:58] It does and I think YG for the reason you mentioned like I don't think if you just took any random Shopper on that site and force them to to use an AR experience that they would suddenly convert. 11 x better so I don't think they expect you know why these friends probably is better is, I don't think it it's this the magic Silver Bullet to cause everyone to buy. I think you have to already have a much higher buying intense. To be interested in trying they are Peter so you have to already be more attached to the item and you're investing more time and in kind of setting it up on your phone and walking to the environment where you want to use it and so it's it's, it's one step below are on the funnel and in so I think it is a great tactic, they are also that your web urging a something we talked about in the show Google and and, Apple have both rolled out AR kits for their operating system that make it way easier to do this kind of stuff well and so. Pals wizard of the pilot user of those two stacks the what people is usually underestimate when they implement this feature, is you need a source of really good data to have the 3D models of all these items into the fact that they have a million items out of there, their inventory of, you know that they have good 3D models for is is to me pretty impressive and that that now is officially the big barrier for any other retailer that wants to add this feature is just how do you get the good 3D data and I I think in the long run. [37:32] The brands are all you know in the same way that they have to provide a long and short description for a retailer when they want to sell something you know what the brands are going to have to start providing 3D files for for these things as well. Scot: [37:45] Yeah that seems like a very large number to me because you and I know most manufactures is a struggle to get a you know a human readable short description you know so they'll be like. Wooden chair so I kind of was locking the logic I was like wow that's a million is like 10% that's why I would have guessed. Jason: [38:07] Generally these first-generation experiences it's more the retailer created the data themselves. Scot: [38:14] Yeah so they must be like you, getting the products in and scan I know people will shoot videos and practice way there's these houses that get quantity one of these things to do that so I was thinking maybe they picked they have the benefit of knowing the top 10% items get them into a studio and then you can run a scan on them that was did you wrote did you walk to the same process. Jason: [38:34] Yeah and they didn't talk about how they do it that's and I would have love for them to Deep dive into that but that's exactly what I would assume and it does create this interesting thing so, and house where is really weird category cuz a lot of furniture is. It's not really branded Furniture it's like private label furniture that a bunch of different retailers all sell the same thing and call it something wildly different so there is some office case in their butt. [39:03] If you think about it house now has that in owns that 3D data the manufacturer doesn't so when. [39:13] Amazon or Crate & Barrel or some other seller wants to sell that same item you know they they, they're going to eat at to spend the same money has spent or the manufacturers are going to have to go spend the money to do a 3D scan the file or, go back to the designer and get the 3D CAD files from the designer in so it does it does create this new work stream this is how, a lot of new attributes in e-commerce this is how they start the first time someone a retailer wants to use in the retailer has to invent them and once it becomes a best practice it gets put back on the manufacturer and eventually the manufacturer gets couldn't provide that mean the same as it is true a digital images. Scot: [39:52] It also made me wonder you know the wafer ones talked about a lot that made me wonder how many models they have and if they're doing something somewhere. Jason: [39:59] Yeah and if you think about it in this category is even more ugly like a, the hardware the 3D scan these big items is more convoluted than then you know like simple tabletop items and so much of the stuff is drop shipped like if these were shoes that sat in a filming Center you can imagine sitting up shop and seeing a bunch of shoes in the Fulfillment center but a lot of these things. You know you like it in the case of Wayfair they never pass through a Wayfair facility where Wayfair could scan them. Scot: [40:27] F R Anderson cool so after house we had a Google up and the Google one was probably if I was going to pick one that was my highlight of this would have been it and even then I think it was, how what Google announced the show was largely misunderstood so I wanna spend some time on that because I think it's, pretty important so what are the interesting things that's going on is the the guy that used to run retailer Google his name was John a furnace and he was he left to join Pinterest and saw him several times the show he was there with pry like 50 Pinterest people which I thought was interesting because, you know I'm easily sink shoptalk in Pinterest so I just got this vibe that there's something going on there. And I don't know what it is but but he's also like his official title there is SVP of ads okay so that makes sense and commerce it Pinterest so pictures has had when I would call some. Pretty you know man e-commerce things that got rich pins they did a little Marketplace I kind of went about it in a weird way that was not very. Customer friendly was easy to implement but not a great customer experience so I almost kind of like was wondering you know. Why is Pinterest have so many people here why they hire Al Fitness e-commerce have answers but I just thought was interesting to see that so anyway, Daniel is a great addition to the retail team so it's official title is president of retail and shopping at Google I talk to a lot of googlers and they were all really excited because this kind of the folks that are in the Google shopping side and they've been working on retail for a long time. [41:59] I feel like retail is really elevating at Google and. The person they talk about Daniel has been a senior leader Google for quite a while I think his prior title. [42:13] I was stressing yeah he was like Global and strategic Partnerships so you know he he was quite a senior person and, he's also well known a Google you know these companies like a Google or an Amazon aren't really known for their ability to partner with other people wear as you know I think he has led the charge in certain categories were partnering is going to be essential for the wedding so I was really eager to hear what he had to talk about he went through you know. [42:40] I don't think whatever Google people get up there they have to kind of go through the rigmarole of, we have seven properties that were billing users were Google where mazing here's the big trends we see the meat and potatoes of his talk to me was the announcement of I called this Universal shopping cart and I'm not a fan of that I've had these two spirit things at Google, send it. Google Assistant which we know and love on the show they've had Google Express. What started out as a kind of delivery service in a couple of areas and just think of it as kind of one hour type. Product and then they've had product listing ads and so through a the pieles are a. A shopping enabled kind of a not enabled e-commerce ad unit if you will so far. 20 products that has a price and that kind of stuff so they put them all under this umbrella now and they've actually. The cool thing for me is I sent you they built on Marketplace on the park posting ads and that they taking a couple shots at this last time I was called by on Google and. It was just so micro so it was like 5 merchants on Android only Angie had to have Google pay and it had to be enabled it had to have this that in you but time you slice all that stuff you're looking at like you know. 500000 users which which is nothing but in the world of Google with all these billion dollar properties it's like why are you so where she going after these like you know, like slice of a size of a slice of a slice but unfortunately are not doing a great job of describing it I think about it is you can now take any SKU and have it available in a lot of different flavors so so first of all. [44:26] If it's like what I would call an e-commerce Q me you're going to ship it either from a fulfillment center or a store so kind of like a two-day plus kind of a thing you can make that viable in a Google search result. Is that product is near the user and available for delivery same day that's another option Source, these rings of availability. And then also you can make that SKU available to Google assistant so example that they have used a lot is as you know target has a private label cpg brand called up and up. [44:55] So they show this this detergent that has been enabled with this new ad unit that's called shopping action, abled then there's three use cases so you can say OK Google, buy up and up laundry detergent and it will it will know then. Based on where you are if you can get it kind of same day or in an e-commerce kind of a Note 2 day type experience so you it will ask you and if it's available in both It'll ask you which one you want. The baby shopping shipping fees and stuff there and then if you're in the Google Express experience you'll see that product because it is available at a local store and then if you're in a sponsored. Pla you will see it there as well so there. You know we are at Channel advisor we are in early partner on this and it I can say they said on stage, Target and Ultra Ultra are seeing 20% left from that, police unit and I can say there's there's several other people in there and and this is causing really good lift for folks in this is something I think it's been a long time coming, there's certainly some attribution things in there but but I think happens if the desktop metaphor doesn't work on mobile the whole go search for detergent go in to target.com forget your credentials. Get a password reset login put it in your Target card. Then order Denver enter your credit card that's such a drag because up further in the stack the phone already knows who you are and you already have your credit card in the Play Store so why not just use those credentials so so this is another attempt I think at kind of. [46:38] Elevating that transaction higher in this. So I'm excited about it and they went to Great pains not to call the Marketplace but my mind it's Marketplace. [46:48] So so I took this to mean Google is getting a lot more serious about Marketplace and how do they surface this product and make it. Yo and partner with retailers to two. I think the big win here is going to be closing the mobile Gap and what did Al furnace did is he came from the Travel Group. At Google where they did this to an Indus was controversial because some people thought they were kind of going around to Travel Systems and stuff but you can actually buy a hotel room right on, Google mobile and dramatically increase conversion rates versus kind of like that again that desktop metaphor of OK Google says there's a hotel over here, now let me go to that hotel site and then iterate through you can actually go by that room on Google Now I'm so so I think they seen some really interesting things on travel and they want to bring it here they did a 100 of it over the last 2 years that didn't get a lot of success and then this time it's feels like they're taking a much bigger at that swing. Jason: [47:46] For sure like I do think they're taking a bigger swing it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Huge difference between travel and most of the sort of product Commerce you know, in travel you're mainly trying to sell a room or a flight and if you can bundle other travel Services into that sell it's great but like the overwhelming majority of the time it's a win the book a room, a lot of individual items that you sell an e-commerce are only profitable if you get the customer to buy more than one thing and so you know that the level of difficulty for Google is is much higher in the Commerce base than the travel space in my mind because, it can't just be. Click to buy button in search results because that that frankly is going to drive everyone a single item purchase is a oviso go down and you know the artiste rest. Profitability in the in the whole ekosistem would get even more stress so it's going to it's going to be interesting to see how all that plays out to. I I get so one funny thing the economic model is different than most other Google ads units in in you know most cases your you're paying for that. That exposure in the ad world and you know Google is charging much more like a Marketplace hear your your you know paying at a crate on the on the stuff that Google help you sell or you know in the. The ad business they call this a rev-share model and when the word got out that they were watching this format. All the traditional SEO guys piano. [49:17] Because they misinterpreted this as Google will now share the profits with you and elevate your listings in organic search so they. They said it was a you know several days of panic on Twitter where it where that was sort of going around I guess one other interesting outcome of this is. It also creates the scenario where you may not have paid to have a pla show up. But Google me decide to place your POA extra times that you didn't pay for and take the rev-share from it and so that that's it in aspect of this program as well as the Google can Canal run Google funded pla. Scot: [49:57] Yeah it's going to be really interesting to see and I know we're going to type for time but let's talk about some of the implications in a future show. Jason: [50:06] For sure we had to run from that Keynote. To another event that that they is sort of an event within an event Jason Del Rey from recode they they host a. A dinner or in the evening at shoptalk they call code Commerce and so you know he he typically gets like about three interesting speakers, you know at at this sort of show within a show and so we. We hooked it from the keynote to join Jason's event and there's some interesting speakers there as well so the 1st guys up there. Was Eric Nordstrom who's one of the three. Nordstrom Brothers running Nordstrom's right now and who does not do a lot of public event so that that is kind of a cool get and he was on stage with. This gentleman Don Kingsborough who's from a company called one market and I'll get into that in just a second so having Eric there. [51:14] Would be cool under any circumstances but news and come out bad day that the board of directors of Nordstrom had sort of turned down the Nordstrom families offer to buy. The company back and take it private and so the the you know according to the reports the deal is dead now. And so you know that was obviously a piece of news that Jason went right at Eric about. And which Eric had very little interest in discussing and probably let you know wasn't at Liberty to discuss it created some sort of. A humorous for us awkward for Eric moments at the beginning of that interview. Scot: [51:54] God knowing you Delray didn't what up it kept coming up he kept on them. Jason: [51:59] Exactly and I kind of a funny line he's like you know I'd like to say I appreciate the question but I really don't. That's what I heard of humorist in so he's he was on stage with this guy Don Kingsborough and Don is the CEO of a company called One Market. And there are there a spin-off out of a incubation lab that's owned by Westfield malls in so I don't think. [52:26] Westfield may still hold an interest in one market but they're separate entity now I think they probably figured out that nobody would want to. Participate with one market if they were exclusively owned by this one mall and one market is kind of an interesting venture. You know personally I'm a little skeptical on it but the the gist of it is that hey, Amazon has walked up a big chunk of the market and then this huge unfair Advantage Amazon has all this data about the consumer, they see way more of the consumers purchase behavior and more the browsing Behavior than anyone else and they're really putting all the traditional retailers at a disadvantage because no one retailer. With the you know possible exception of of Walmart really has the the. Date of his ability to know the customer as well as Amazon does and so what Market is an effort to say let's create a data Coop where all the retailers share everything they know about a consumer, and then we'll make. That data available to any of the retailers in the coop to improve their experience and they have to make that data available in a, a very limited way like they can't share. Personally identifiable information from one retailer to another and they they can't you know give one retailer another retailers customers but essentially if. If you're a customer and you've done a bunch of shopping at coach and so coach knows you really well and then you walk into Michael Kors. [54:02] And you know Michael Kors says Hey I just met this guy Scot wingo and he's in the coop database the the, One Market would be able to share some of the the enhanced data they know about Scott Wingo that they learned from Scott shopping with coach, and so so at at it. I don't know if I explained that very well but at the highest level this is sort of a customer data Co-op to compete with, Amazon. Scot: [54:30] Yeah I have to say I've never met non-don before but he seemed like a really story guy it did like it has a really great since it like PayPal and places so so no doubt he can build with it he says Google but I honestly didn't understand if it about it. I did I guess I didn't get to use case it's like I don't really care if I go to Southpoint mall and then I go to Crabtree mall and didn't know about me like, I just don't understand, but I couldn't really get my head around you space and maybe that's cuz I'm a very transactional Mall person am I going to the Apple store to get my airpods that's it I'm not I'm not like a browser baby but I don't know I kind of missed the use case. Jason: [55:06] So you you are so you are hitting on one of the potential liabilities of this model is none of these retailers are pretty good at using the data they do already have about all of us when we shop and so it's it's hard to say that their biggest problem is they don't know enough about us, but it is fair to say you know the date that they are worried that they know less about us than Amazon does so I can I get that a big problem with this model is is, anytime you explain anything like this model to a consumer they're going to immediately panic and get creeped out and it it just sounds like big brother, and so it's. We'll have to see if it's focused on the Legacy mall guys in a Dina retailers and of course they have a bunch of other headwinds that are unrelated to any of this so, I don't know I'll be honest though I did get the impression, the Don has a personal relationship with Eric and that the deal struck and by the way Nordstrom is one of the retards participating in one market so I suspect the deal struck was, Eric will come onto code Commerce and talk with Jason Delray if he gets to bring down with him and gone gets to make a pitch for one market. Scot: [56:14] Yeah and they didn't talk about it but I kind of got the vibe Nordstrom Ava invested in that that entity. Jason: [56:21] Yeah that well so it's a it's a co-op I think all the retailers that participate are basically investors why do you own a piece of it so it's so absolutely. [56:30] Until Eric had a vested interest in Dawn doing well and you know let me just say like I don't think Jason had a lot of super interesting questions for Don I think he was a lot more focused on what did you get out of there. Scot: [56:43] Absolutely. Jason: [56:45] So I am not sure it was a lot of interesting Nordstrom revelations in in this interview other than. You know the plan at Nordstrom's to do what they've always been doing you know it's the fact that we didn't buy the company back doesn't change anything was kind of Eric's message. I thought it was kind of a just a funny random story Eric telling the story about his dad Bruce Nordstrom that was in a former president of Nordstrom's and how whenever someone would call Nordstrom department store. How Bruce would be really upset and say we're not a department store where specialty store and you know for the. [57:23] You know if I was listening Nordstrom started out as a shoe retailer and they they still like have a lot of that DNA and. Eric said if not you know I would be like whatever Dad where we're big store with a escalator so call it what you want and it just was a funny moment for me thinking of this I store a retail family like having these arguments around the Thanksgiving table about whether there a department store or not. Scot: [57:47] Yeah I'd never met at Nordstrom's that was kind of cool. Jason: [57:51] The other thing that came up a little bit which is interesting I don't think Eric Shirley new information but Nordstrom has the store in Los Angeles called Nordstrom local, and this is a small a small store by Nordstrom's standards I think it still pretty big I think it's like that twenty thousand square foot store which a full Nordstrom might be why. 50000 square feet. [58:14] And there is no inventory for sale in the store so it's kind of like a bona bus guide shop like it's either you know there's personalized customer experiences and shopping concierge and lots of mannequins that you can look at, but then you you order the product in Nordstrom ships at your house and the talking point that Jason was focused on was. I've heard a lot about the store in the fact that it's. It's not profitable and isn't likely to be profitable in the in the near future and so this feels like. Kind of a project or an investment for Nordstrom and you know aren't you worried about not being able to make those kind of Investments going forward since you you know you were unsuccessful in in going private. And I think Eric's point was no we we paid for this without going private then we we do lots of things like this all the time so this is sort of business as usual for us is, and we do some things we expect to be profitable right away and we do some things that we expect to learn from and hope to make a profit in the longer Horizon. Scot: [59:18] Call the sex would really quick so I was excited at shoptalk surely but also could Commerce there was a little bit more, kind of of the different models out there this one I would put kind of squarely in the on-demand economy bucket which is I'm obviously pretty fascinated with, funny company in this is in the food delivery category where there is a battle royale going on so they had the CEO doordash in his name is Tony shoe, oh that's spelled XU and then he was on stage with one of the leaders at the Cheesecake Factory which is a very popular restaurant and they had just announced that they are doing a delivery food delivery for cheesecake through doordash. And I didn't realize it until I saw eBay partnership, from 2009 to 2011 so that was cool to see someone from the world of e-commerce kind of spread his wings and becoming an option or. The one of the. Big news items us and Kara Swisher did the interview here and she couldn't seem to get her head around the fact they just raised over $509 so they're there well beyond the Unicorn. Status which is Sue sought-after in the Bay Area which means you have a valuation over billion I would Hazard a guess or pry a deck of corn which is a 10 billion dollar valuation so there's so there's aislers GrubHub which is actually, public there's the big one that's really gaining popularity is ubereats and then there's many many more of these there. [1:00:48] Pretend food did this is like prepared food delivery companies and if you widen the radius little bit to include ingredient make yourself kinds of things than the category it's even even. Even got more crowded and so she's kind of hammering on like you know why would you waste so much money and that kind of thing. This is I commiserate with the size opportunity and he's right you know this is a multibillion-dollar opportunity if they can get 5% of all restaurants business to be, true you're just in the industry and they capture 30% of that that ends up being a, a really really big number so any talked about I think you said there in 30 markets and they're going to get into 80 so there there's a geographic component of this, yeah when funny question was she asking what are you scared most of these at the telephone and she was like. [1:01:41] What you mean and you know it's just like that's the customer experience they're up against is they kind of have to be better than just calling the restaurant on the phone to do take out with witch and and then you obviously have to go get it but I thought that was kind of interesting. [1:01:55] And then you and I is kind of funny you and I had kind of had this discussion around you know with these with this business isn't good for the restaurants in bad and, there's an argument that the sex it hurts marching, because you're already paying for that kitchen staff and everything and then if they're making meals for this pickup you don't get a lot of that up sell that you get in the restaurant is your same argument that they made with the Google marketplace, when you went to people go to restaurant have a meal there's alcohol involved there's maybe a dessert that you didn't plan to have appetizers and that kind of thing, Raz I think, I would guess the ticket when you're doing takeout or delivery is much less and you obviously don't get alcohol sales which is where there's a lot of margin but they got to ask a question about that and the cheesecake guy I explained that you don't know it's really. Incremental business so they already have the fixed cost of the kitchen and they viewed it as incremental and they therefore you know yes the margin is lower. Then an end in a dine in guest. But it's incremental margin so you going to help the prophet leave the restaurant so I thought that was an interesting argument you a lot of people that I talk to after. Forecast skeptical about that so and then he did talk about at the Cheesecake Factory. Like 2 years ago they had 8% take out and now it's kind of risen to 12%. [1:03:18] Didn't ever say if this was exclusive because one of these guys do is they will actually kind of order as if their customer and then said their drivers so they don't have to have a you know a relationship with the restaurant so I know GrubHub does that for example so. Part of that 12% is not only doordash but probably all the other delivery guys too and then lasalette said that they said that. 25% of doordash volume is from chains and then. I thought they said the rest was for Independence but I think you took a note and tweeted 5% so. Jason: [1:03:51] No no no. That's a typo in your notes you are exactly right 75%. Scot: [1:03:54] He has a deep restaurant background I think. I think he said his parents are restaurant for sure. Jason: [1:04:06] Is Mom still run the restaurant. Scot: [1:04:07] Yeah but then somewhere in there someone said I think he said his grandparents also had a restaurant I I couldn't tell it maybe his mom is taking over the enrichment videos. You can't came back to his roots and, I'm really understood the restaurant business deeply and then final comment when asked you know there's always competitors out there when asked how they're going to win I thought his answer was pretty clever he said you know we're really just focused on this we're not doing self-driving cars were not doing. [1:04:33] You know building a whole delivery Network that separate were really focus on how do we deliver an amazing dining experience and you know how do we in the he said it was very Amazon way of thinking it out we measure every second. Between when the order comes in and it gets delivered and how do we get the food there hot fresh so I left that you know thinking, here's a guy that's really kind of gets it he understands the customer and he's going to Worcester 500 million so so I felt like he had a pretty good shot at winning and I was excited to see where they take it. Jason: [1:05:04] That I would also argue that he already has a considerably better customer experience than a lot of his competitor so I'd like some of that that focus and Care like is already very evident in in their customer experience. Scot: [1:05:20] Yeah one one example of that was even worrying about you when they deliver the cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory making sure the slice looks perfect and it hasn't like flipped on its side or getting off stuck around in the container, that's those kind of details that I spent a lot of my day on this site I really appreciated that level of detail that they think about. Jason: [1:05:38] Yeah for sure and I think that I would just you know mention that listeners this is an area to pay attention to the whole food consumption industry is going through major disruption right now and it's really unclear. What the future looks like but you know when the friction to get food restaurant food delivered home is way lower suddenly those restaurants are competing with. What used to be grocery trips when you buy ingredients and make your own dinner and th

Ep. 291: Sourcing Groceries: Buying Locally or Online? In this episode, Stacy and Sarah are buying their groceries. But where do they go? What do they buy? Find out here! Click here to listen in iTunes or download and listen by clicking the PodBean Player below If you enjoy the show, please review it in iTunes!   The Paleo View (TPV), Episode 291: Sourcing Groceries: Buying Locally or Online? Intro (0:00) News and Views (0:40) Sarah gets to chaperone a sleep over field trip this week! Stacy thinks it doesn't sound like something she'd like, haha! Sarah's daughter has been looking forward to it and counting down the days. Sarah has chaperoned before and enjoyed it, though she knows she'll be exhausted. Stacy and family are prepping for their cruise in a couple weeks. It was the boys' Christmas gift. Stacy often gets asked about which food items she buys online and which she buys locally. It's an individualized thing depending on where you live and what you buy. Produce and Pantry: Buy Locally or Online? (6:15) There are a lot of international markets local to Stacy. This is great for those more focused on budget than quality (organic). They buy sweet potato noodles for Japchae here! Produce is 1/3 of the price they normally see. They don't buy "The Dirty Dozen" items here because they aren't organic. Trader Joe's and Costco are Stacy's other recommended places to shop. They are more limited in what they have and when they have it. Costco doesn't always have the same products because they rotate them out. Chosen Foods Avocado Oil is a great bargain here. Trader Joe's sources some things locally, and usually has an organic option. Stacy feels fortunate to have these stores available to her. Sarah loves her local farmer's market! It is very inexpensive, fresh, organically grown, and local. Sarah starts her shopping here and then rounds things out at other stores. Sarah loves the relationships she has formed with her local farmers. They do special things for her (and all their customers!) which she appreciates. Sarah also shops at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Kroger. She starts at the more inexpensive places and works up. Sometimes it depends on what she needs or which store is closer to her at the time. In the winter when her farmer's market is closed, she shops more heavily at grocery stores. Sarah visits Costco once every 6 weeks and stocks up because it is a farther drive. Costco is great for nuts, dried fruit, frozen foods, and pantry items. They are on a mission to make their store 50% or more natural or organic. The protein options have improved a lot. Sarah loves the toilet paper at Costco- it's "perfect." Stacy doesn't use any fresh food delivery system. Stacy is a control freak and wants to pick out her own food! If its a time or money-saver for you and you love it, that's great. Sarah's kids are eating a lot as they grow, so they try to use foods that stretch a meal. Cabbage and sweet potato are great for this! Sarah tends towards more inexpensive meats like ground beef and pork shoulder. Sarah's family doesn't eat all organic or pasture-raised meats all the time. Sarah likes Thrive Market, Amazon Subscribe and Save, and One Stop Paleo Shop. Stacy also uses Amazon and One Stop Paleo Shop, especially when they offer a coupon! Protein: Buy Locally or Online? (6:15) Stacy feels very strongly about buying meat locally. They live in a "farm state" with lots of options locally. It doesn't make sense for her to order meat online because of the cost on the earth to ship it. They save money on protein by buying 1/4 or 1/2 animals at a time. It isn't as convenient or quick, and takes more forethought. Stacy and Matt talk a lot about this in Beyond Bacon. She also subscribes to local farmer's newsletters to learn about sales and discounts. Stacy values eating "the whole animal," even if it means learning to use uncommon cuts. These are usually the more inexpensive cuts as well. Stacy has a local butcher shop (Organic Butcher of McClean) she loves. She can get things like broth bones and eggs year round. They know who she is when she walks in the door and what things she likes to buy. They have great recommendations for the best, freshest things they have that day. Shopping small and local lets you have great relationships with your farmer. Stacy doesn't prefer to have things that need to be refrigerated or frozen delivered. Capello's is a great example: they used to order it online, but Stacy has talked a couple local shops into carrying them, which was Capello's goal in the first place. Sarah has a bit of a counter-perspective on sourcing protein. Sarah gets a lot of their meat at the farmer's market in the summer when it's open. In the winter she's buys meat from both local stores and Butcher Box. There is an ideal: everything local, organic, in season. Then there is the compromise we have to make things actually work in our lives. We don't all have local farms close by where we can get quality food. It is worthwhile to search for what is available locally, which might take a bit of research. If it isn't available, don't feel guilty for ordering good quality meat online. Where you live will have a lot of influence over what you can find locally. There are so many factors that affect what we buy and what our food budget is. Eating locally is worth the effort into figuring out how to fit it into your life. If it isn't possible, there are many other great options! Stacy would love feedback from anyone testing the Amazon/Whole Foods delivery options. Shout out to Matt for turning a conversation into a podcast! If you've enjoyed the show, please recommend it to someone who might enjoy it. We love when you share and when you leave reviews for us! Thanks for listening! Real Everything The Paleo Mom Support us by shopping through links on our sidebars- thanks!

This week we took a look back at the year’s M&A market, which brought some big wins and some low lights. Equity this week was Katie Roof, Alex Wilhelm, and Jamie Leigh, a partner at Cooley, who joined us to go over the year’s receipts. What to look for ahead? Leigh mentioned big box stores, Roof brought up automakers, and we also kicked over the idea of non-tech companies buying smaller firms that are not merely talent plays. (Instead, this about investments in long-term efforts to build in-house innovation instead of stapling on a startup to one division or another.) Also: How many deals didn’t get done in 2017 that got close to being done? More than you might have thought, and, according to our guest, that fact means that we could see more M&A in the first quarter or two in 2018. (All that and Intel-MobileEye came up, Amazon-Whole Foods got a mention, Target-Shipt got a mention and more!) This is the second, and final 2017 wrap-up episode we have for you. Starting next week, it’s back to the regular show! Catch you all next week.

This week we took a look back at the year’s M&A market, which brought some big wins and some low lights. Equity this week was Katie Roof, Alex Wilhelm, and Jamie Leigh, a partner at Cooley, who joined us to go over the year’s receipts. What to look for ahead? Leigh mentioned big box stores, Roof brought up automakers, and we also kicked over the idea of non-tech companies buying smaller firms that are not merely talent plays. (Instead, this about investments in long-term efforts to build in-house innovation instead of stapling on a startup to one division or another.) Also: How many deals didn’t get done in 2017 that got close to being done? More than you might have thought, and, according to our guest, that fact means that we could see more M&A in the first quarter or two in 2018. (All that and Intel-MobileEye came up, Amazon-Whole Foods got a mention, Target-Shipt got a mention and more!) This is the second, and final 2017 wrap-up episode we have for you. Starting next week, it’s back to the regular show! Catch you all next week.

Craig Williams, Global Outreach Manager at Cisco Security, explains the need to protect connected holiday devices from cyber hacks. Eric Clark, Portfolio Manager at Rational Funds, discusses investing in “old” tech stocks. Bloomberg Stocks Editor Dave Wilson shares his “Chart of the Day.” Craig Giammona, Bloomberg News Consumer Reporter, tells us why the Amazon/Whole Foods deal is boosting delivery startups. Joerg Lamprecht, CEO at Dedrone, talks about using drones in defense and airspace security. And Carol and Cory hit today's Movers and Shakers on Wall Street and Dave Wilson has his “Stock of the Day.”  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Craig Williams, Global Outreach Manager at Cisco Security, explains the need to protect connected holiday devices from cyber hacks. Eric Clark, Portfolio Manager at Rational Funds, discusses investing in “old” tech stocks. Bloomberg Stocks Editor Dave Wilson shares his “Chart of the Day.” Craig Giammona, Bloomberg News Consumer Reporter, tells us why the Amazon/Whole Foods deal is boosting delivery startups. Joerg Lamprecht, CEO at Dedrone, talks about using drones in defense and airspace security. And Carol and Cory hit today’s Movers and Shakers on Wall Street and Dave Wilson has his “Stock of the Day.” 

Welcome back to Future Squared for a very special milestone episode number 200…. it seems like just yesterday I was sitting down with my co-founder and bashing out episode #1. That was now over 20 months ago and in that time I’ve been lucky enough to speak with and learn from the likes of Kevin Kelly, Steve Blank, Tim Harford, Jason Calacanis, Gretchen Rubin, Andreas Antonopoulous, Karen Dillon, Sean Ellis, Massimo Pigliucci, Brad Feld, Jamie Wheal, Lawrence Levy, Tyler Cowen, Alec Ross, Jamie Wheal, Susan David, David Allen and countless others - it just blows my mind how far this show has come in a short amount of time, picking up the Australian people’s choice award for best business podcast earlier this year and amassing a following of thousands. So with that, I would just like to say a big THANK YOU for listening to the show, whether you’ve been with us from the start, whether you discovered the show 100 episodes in or whether this is the first time listening to the show - thank you so much - of course, if you have been a fan all of this time, I look forward to bringing you another 200 episodes and if you’d like to show some love, simply take a minute to leave a rating on iTunes, Stitcher or Google Play - it goes a long way to ensuring that the show gets into as many ears as possible.   What I’m doing on this show ultimately aligns with our mission here at Collective Campus which is to unlock people’s potential to create more imact for humanity and lead more fulfilling lives and I just hope that through these episodes you’ve been inspired to act and create change or add value to your life and the lives of people around you in ways both great and small. So with that, it’s time to introduce today’s guest... Professor Scott Galloway. Scott is a clinical professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, and a public speaker, author, and entrepreneur. He was named one of the world's 50 best business school professors by Poets and Quants. He has just released The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google which is already a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller. In it Scott deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can’t match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career. In this episode you will learn: How the big four tech titans got to where they are today and why we’re wrong about how we think they got there Whether the big four are too big to fail and what the broader social and economic implications of their dominance are; and How to apply lessons from the big four to accelerate your career Topics discussed: - Scott predicting the Amazon Wholefoods acquisition - How Amazon made money on the acquisition, almost immediately - How companies like Amazon have a competitive advantage by getting big on "someone else's credit card" - Why investors are so forgiving to companies like Amazon, Tesla and Facebook despite high profile crises that would destroy other companies - How these companies got so big - Are the big four 'too big to fail'? - Has Google gotten so big and collected so much data that it's almost impossible for a second entrant to compete? - How companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, UBER and Facebook concentrate wealth in Silicon Valley, much to the detriment of social safety nets everywhere  - How big four companies are doing much more with much less - How behemoths like Amazon and Google get away with paying effectively no tax while small companies end up paying much more on a per capita basis - On Silicon Valley companies designing apps to effectively addict us to dopamine hits - In the wake of high profile anti-trust breaches, sexual harrassment cases and multi-billion dollar fines, are the big four's companies political fortunes on the decline? - Jeff Immelt's ousting at GE and how the market was less forgiving for a traditional company than a Tesla (despite the latter's product recalls and missing production targets) - How we can apply the lessons of the big four to our own lives   Show Notes: 1) Book website: www.thefourbook.com 2) Twitter: @profgalloway 3) Get the book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2CKzGqb   Listen on iTunes @ goo.gl/sMnEa0  Listen on Stitcher @ www.stitcher.com/podcast/future  Listen on Google Play @  bit.ly/FSGoog If you've got any questions on this podcast feel free to send an email to steve@collectivecamp.us or tweet me on Twitter @steveglaveski or @future_squared Follow me on Instagram: @thesteveglaveski Like us? It'd make our day if you took 1 minute to show some love on iTunes, Stitcher or Soundcloud by subscribing, sharing and giving us a 5 star rating. To sign up to our mailing list head to www.futuresquared.xyz For more information on Collective Campus, our innovation hub, school and consultancy based in Australia and Singapore check out www.collectivecamp.us    

There is no denying the inventory and logistics benefits of Whole Foods being purchased by Amazon. Any spreadsheet or report can show that. But what is often overlooked in the history of acquisitions is culture. Jeremy Smith believes there is a high probability that Whole Foods will fail post-Amazon purchase because of it. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has already acknowledged the cultural challenges. We talk about Online vs Retail, what the future holds, and what food startups can do to best compete moving forward.  

Host Jenna Liut speaks with Michael Winik, Founder & CEO of OurHarvest, an online farmers market delivery service working to increase access to locally grown, sustainably sourced and hugely delicious food from the greater New York area. Michael explains why and how his company could make huge changes to our currently broken food system by upending the food retail industry. He also leverages his background as a former investment banker to unpack what the recent Amazon/Whole Foods merger means for consumers, producers, and industry... and why you should care. Eating Matters is powered by Simplecast

Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey on the future of supermarkets; Dawson City, Yukon, Canada’s “Sour Toe Cocktail”; our recipe for Vietnamese Coffee Cake; salt and pepper get divorced; and Dr. Aaron Carroll on why eggs are safe.

Die größte Übernahme in der Geschichte Amazons: Christoph Keese, Jan Thede und Martin Spindler besprechen, was es mit dem Kauf von Wholefoods auf sich hat. Was bezweckt Amazon damit? Für welche Branchen bedeutet der Kauf eine disruptive Gefahr? Warum sind Lebensmittel sogar für Online-Riesen wie Amazon so wichtig?

On October 14, 2017, the Shiva 4 Senate campaign educated customers at Whole Foods on Monsanto's involvement in poisoning America's food supply. Customers were very appreciative that Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai was taking time on a Saturday afternoon to educate..

The latest Building Local Power podcast episode features a discussion between ILSR initiative director Christopher Mitchell and co-director Stacy Mitchell on the Amazon-Whole Foods deal. The conversation features a number of issues, including why Amazon's growth isn't that innovative after all due to their market power as a crushing force for consolidation. Much of the conversation is an extension of our Amazon's Stranglehold report, co-authored by Stacy and ILSR researcher Olivia LaVecchia. Amazon's role as a marketplace, a distributor, and as a producer of items paired with their ability to sell below cost marks it as a formidable force of consolidation in the American economy. As Stacy says, “concentration begets concentration.” Can another company come along and unseat them? I think it's pretty remarkable that it's now been quite a few years since we've seen an internet company come along and change things. Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, those guys are getting pretty old at this point, and there is no new entity that has come along, in part, because if one gets to be too successful, one of those big companies either pushes it out of the market in a predatory way, or they buy it up. How is it that we're going to see a new competitor come along and challenge Amazon? Transcript Christopher Mitchell: Hey, Stacy. Stacy Mitchell: Hey, Chris, how are you? Christopher Mitchell: Hey, I'm doing pretty good. I'm curious if you have a number for us for this week. Stacy Mitchell: It's 465. Christopher Mitchell: 465, what is that? Stacy Mitchell: That's the number of Whole Foods stores that are now owned by Amazon. Christopher Mitchell: Yes, and we can say “now owned” because we waited a little bit to get a sense of what was happening before doing the show rather than just rushing in like other people. This week we're going to be talking about Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods and some more monopoly power type stuff. Stacey is the famous Stacey Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance out in Portland, Maine. I am Chris, the less-famous Mitchell of the Minnesota office. I work on broadband issues. Stacey works on independent businesses, and we're a part of the team here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that's fighting to build local power to make sure that communities are strong, and that we're all happy to wake up tomorrow morning. I think that's kind of a good summary. Stacy Mitchell: That's right. Christopher Mitchell: Let's talk about Amazon, let's just maybe some basic facts to refresh people's memories and maybe people just heard about it without really getting into it. What exactly happened? To be clear, this is Amazon. It's not Jeff Bezos personally, as in the acquisition of Washington Post. I think those are important distinction. Stacy Mitchell: That's right. Back in mid-June Amazon announced its intention to acquire Whole Foods, the chain of natural foods grocery stores. Just about six weeks later it was quietly approved by the Federal Trade Commission, or the FTC. It was approved with lightning speed in what we can only assume was a fairly cursory review of the issues. This is despite the fact that a lot of people, including people in the food industry, folks like us who study concentrated market power, legal scholars, members of Congress, a lot of folks had raised serious concerns about this merger. Yet, it appears that the FTC approved it rather quickly and didn't take a deep look at what those issues are. Christopher Mitchell: You say “appears”, this is an interesting point that goes along with the speed, which is that we don't really know because, what'd they issue, three sentences in terms of their decision? Stacy Mitchell: Yeah, it's really remarkable the lack of transparency. Yeah, it was a total of three very basic sentences in their statement that said that this merger had been approved. There's no further explanation in terms of how they chose to look at this deal,...

Neuberger Berman's Charles Kantor discusses the Amazon/Whole Foods deal and also says GE's Jeff Immelt performed well for his company. Peter Westaway, Vanguard Asset Services' chief European economist, says the slightly dovish message from the BOE is appropriate. Finally, Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, says the scale of cyberattacks will grow. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Robert Profusek, partner and chair of global M&A at law firm Jones Day, says he doesn't know whether Amazon's decision to acquire Whole Foods is about retail, tech, grocery or activism. Prior to that, Libby Cantrill, PIMCO's executive vice president, says Washington has become both political and personal. State Street Global Advisors' Kheng Siang Ng says the BOJ isn't ready to act yet. Donald Marron, the Urban Institute's director of economic policy initiatives, says reconciliation must be in place before a partisan tax reform can happen. Finally, Lindsey Piegza, Stifel Nicolaus' chief economist, says momentum in housing is declining. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com