Podcasts about burlington coat factory

On my FAFO Friday episode of The Clay Edwards Show, I kicked things off with a bang, hyped about being just 10 episodes shy of my 1,000th show, slated for Friday, June 13, 2025. I'm already dreaming big—maybe I'll get Ric Flair to swing by for the milestone! Reflecting on big moments, I brought up the late Mike Leach's posthumous induction into the College Football Hall of Fame after a rule tweak, a reminder to never take a single day for granted. Broadcasting from Flora, Mississippi, on 103.9 FM WYAB, my show streams worldwide in crisp HD from the Men's Health & Women's Wellness Studios.   I dove into a wild story about Jackson's Metrocenter Mall, where Randy Travis is reportedly dropping $5 million to turn the old Burlington Coat Factory into a Randy Travis Country Store and Travel Center. I'm skeptical—given the area's crime and demographics, I can't see it working out. I predicted it might morph into a sketchy gas station in a few years. My listeners backed me up, texting about safety concerns and Travis's health struggles post-stroke.   For the second hour, I welcomed former Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn, the first Republican in that seat in 136 years, from 2012 to 2024. Philip opened up about losing his family to a drunk driver 37 years ago, a tragedy that shaped his faith and drive. We talked about the Republican wave in Mississippi, sparked by the Democratic Party's leftward shift, and his proudest wins—like boosting education and passing the state's biggest tax cut. He shared a hilarious story about speeding up a bill-reading machine to counter Democratic delay tactics, a relic of an 1894 rule. Philip hinted at future plans, guided by faith, and I wrapped up feeling grateful for his grit and the chance to share his real story with my audience.

On my FAFO Friday episode of The Clay Edwards Show, I dove into a head-scratching story about the Metrocenter Mall in Jackson, Mississippi, where country music legend Randy Travis and his wife Mary are planning to invest $5 million to transform the former Burlington Coat Factory into a Randy Travis Country Store and Travel Center. Broadcasting from Flora on 103.9 FM WYAB, I couldn't hide my skepticism about the project's chances in a high-crime area with demographics that don't scream country music fans. I jokingly called it a “redneck Buc-ee's” and predicted it might turn into a troubled gas station within three years, given the area's rough reputation. Listeners chimed in on the Guns & Gear text line, echoing my doubts, with some pointing out Travis's health challenges since his 2013 stroke, which left him with aphasia, raising questions about whether he's being taken advantage of. I also noted the mall's decline—once Mississippi's largest when it opened in 1978, now a ghost town since its last store closed in 2022. Recent plans for a film studio there have been plagued by theft, and I questioned the logic of banking on interstate traffic without understanding Jackson's realities. My callers, like Jason and Miss Lacey, agreed, giving the project a grim over-under of weeks before trouble hits, with one suggesting a mental health facility would be a better fit for the site.

We are drinking a beer that Dan has somehow never had. We are featuring Dale's Pale Ale to give it the respect that it deserves. We talk about the beer and how it helped start the can craze, we talk about people trying to form personalities and being toxic, getting beer from the grocery store and the whiskey bubble bursting.Support the podcast by donating at Anchor.fm/bestbestfriendspod/supportCheck out the live stream at Twitch.tv/bestbestfriendspodcastSave $10 on your first box of $25 or more on Tavour with Promo Code BESTBESTFRIENDSPODEpisode Song: Emergence by Sleep TokenRemember to Subscribe, Rate and ReviewUNTAPPD - @BestbestfriendspodINSTAGRAM - @BestbestfriendspodFACEBOOK - @BestbestfriendspodTWITTER - @BBFPodEMAIL - BestBestFriendsPod@gmail.com

Oscar: So you can give that dollar back to mommy and daddy, but guess what? Next summer... Michael: I'll be six. This week we commemorate our sixth anniversary! And to celebrate this milestone, we announce some updates to the content and cadence of our show designed to help us evolve. We dedicate the full episode to talking about those changes and what they mean moving forward, along with mentioning some ideas and input from our Scott's Tots Patreon community. Sincere thanks to everyone who has listened, interacted with us, or supported us over these last 6 years. We wouldn't have been able to go this far without you. Our hearts soar with the eagle's nest.  What did we learn this year? Well, one, thanks to us, our tots are much, much faster at giving input than I thought they would be. Number two, never buy a fur coat with a credit card until you absolutely have the money to pay for it. And three, you should know that some people think it's cool to throw buckets of fake blood on Sean and Alex as they are walking out of Burlington Coat Factory. Support our show and become a member of Scott's Tots on Patreon! For only $5/month, Tots get ad-free episodes plus exclusive access to our monthly Mailbag episodes where we casually pick through every single message/question/comment we receive. We also have Season 2 of our Ted Lasso podcast Biscuits with the Boss available to our Patrons, as well as our White Lotus Christmas Special, Party Down, and unreleased episodes of this show. Oh, and Tots get access to exclusive channels on our Discord. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - Two men were shot in the parking lot of Burlington Coat Factory during a Facebook Marketplace sell gone wrong, Jackson Police say. It happened Monday on East County Line Road. According to Jackson Police, a man met a couple, 24-year-old Chanceler Holmes and 33-year-old Shaneque McAbee, in the parking lot for a meeting arranged on Facebook Marketplace. During the sale, Holmes tried to rob the seller, which resulted in both men being shot.

Recap Review and Breakdown of Week 6 of Jenn Tran Season of the Bachelorette. Marcus Sexual Assault Allegations and Devin N word Allegations. Burlington Coat Factory. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/salaam-nerds-podcast/support

New dates! I'm coming to a city new you soon! Link in IG bio for tickets! This week, the one and only Jay Pharoah!!! We're talking his early days in comedy and the amazing hustle he and his sister put in to make his dreams reality! A few impressions pop out and the positive vibes for anyone at a low point is BIG! Enjoy!!! Instagram: @tinocochinoradio @jaypharoah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, in Libertyville, Illinois, the perfect family has the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood. This all comes crashing down, one stormy night, when two horrific murders take place. It becomes a huge mystery, because family members won't let the teenage children talk to police. Was it the stoner son, who wouldn't join the army, like his dad wanted him to? The seemingly perfect, horse riding daughter? The youngest son, who has been in trouble his whole life? Along the way, we find out that Burlington Coat Factory is an awful place, and we all go there, that seeing someone toss something off a bridge during a night time thunderstorm might be the creepiest thing, ever, and that once in a while, time will loosen a murderer's defenses!!Hosted by James Pietragallo and Jimmie WhismanNew episodes every Thursday!Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.comGo to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!Follow us on...twitter.com/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.com/smalltownmurderAlso, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wow the lads ride again with their friend Matt Bachus to get into it about being a road dawg, bringing culture to cities, being assaulted at the Burlington Coat Factory, hit the Energy Drink Corner and more! Follow us: @mikeabrusci @thisdiegolopez @mattbachussucks @alittletimepod www.patreon.com/alittletimepod

This bum a$$ n*gga went from hating on me to being top flite security for Burlington Coat Factory.

Keeping up appearances can be a full time job. Shawn and Leah are not trying to keep up with the Joneses. In this case, we are talking about a British sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke. Leah recently introduced Shawn to some of her favourite British television shows. The Keeping Up Appearances sitcom follows Hyacinth in her attempts to prove her social superiority, and to gain standing with those she considers upper class. Her attempts are constantly hampered by her lower class extended family, whom she is desperate to hide. Much of the humour comes from the conflict between Hyacinth's vision of herself and the reality of her underclass background. In each episode, she lands in a farcical situation as she battles to protect her social credibility.  Also in this episode, Shawn and Leah discuss some recent travel. Last month saw the two of them travel to Disney World in Florida. They received some lovely feedback from a listener and discuss this. Last weekend the pair went to Saginaw, Michigan. They did a bit of shopping and tried a few stores they had never been to. Burlington Coat Factory proved a disappointment. Five Below was an interesting store with some rather unique items. Shawn and the rest of his co-workers started new mail routes this week. Unhappy chaos at work is likely the best description. The new routes are quite a bit longer than the old ones. The first day was exhausting and nobody knew what they were doing. There is hope things will settle down soon. Regarding Hot Wheels, Shawn is on a new path. He has been collecting for several months, but is now entering a new phase. With the purchase of an airbrush, he is looking at doing custom paint jobs. Although he has never used an airbrush before, he is very much looking forward to it. This week's podcast promo: Monster Attack

First time guests DJ Jon Doe and Eddie Meeks of Southern Vangard Radio swing by to talk about their history with Southern radio, creating weekly mixshows and rap podcasts for close to a decade straight, and their new book outlining their longstanding careers! Plus we talk Burlington Coat Factory, downtown Atlanta looking like "The Walking Dead" during COVID, hanging at Erick Sermon's rim shop (to Castro's delight), and more! As always, for early releases, exclusive content and more join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/calloutculturepodcast --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/calloutculture/support

Back live on a Mondee! Cody is out campin'. Josh re-discovers the Burlington Coat Factory. Why don't TV networks make their stars dance anymore? Plus, Nickleback's hometown & more on a Mondee!

Devon Archer with Tucker Carlson You tend to hang out or around with people that have similar values to you right? Your circle of ‘friends' usually have the same interest and values that is why you are friends. If you are hanging out with the likes of Hunter Biden, you are nasty, corrupt and most likely a criminal. He told Tucker, him and Hunter did exactly what everyone in DC does. $868 billion dollars - to do what?  Defend Democracy across the world? Is there a Navy from a country that doesn't have democracy in any of our waterways just waiting to invade us that we don't know about? The actual invasion from the South that we don't seem to care about. To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states.  At that time regulate meant = to make regular. I bet Devon Archer wasn't wearing a suit from Burlington Coat Factory. I bet Devon Archer wasn't wearing a Timex watch. There was millions to be made in DC and he knew it just as everyone else knows it. Have you ever been to DC and not seen a giant crane building some new Defense Department building?  

Don't have time to listen to the entire Dave & Chuck the Freak podcast? Check out some of the tastiest bits of the day, including what a perv did at Burlington Coat Factory, how a kid carjacked someone, what turned a guys tongue green and hairy and more!

A Detroit Police Commissioner -- who was spotted with a known prostitute in his truck -- is DENYING that the two were engaged in a sex act when the cops pulled up. WWJ's Charlie Langton has more. Caught -- at least by video surveillance.  Police are now asking for YOUR help to find a man caught exposing himself at a Burlington Coat Factory. WWJ's Kyle Kimball has the details. (Credit: WWJ)

Tommy Barbee, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach, Dante Jones, Chrystal O'Keefe and Brett Ballantini took the lead of a recently-stoked Race to the Bottom series and took it a few measures farther: Impressions of a dastardly season, now one-quarter gone What makes this season different from 2018's 100-loss season Does Burlington Coat Factory still exist? Of course Burlington Coat Factory still exists! You go in there with $645, you are literally a king Imagining how the next 120 games will play out ... it doesn't look good for Pedro Is a full teardown/rebuild in the works ... and if so, what conditions need to be met for that to happen? White Sox Pride is now the Scarlett Letter ... W Only one of the five on the panel thinks this season will not end in significant firings/rebuilding  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've been to Mexico, or anywhere in Latin America, chances are you've been in a tienda Oxxo. These are the largest chain of convenience stores in all of Latin America and maybe even the most haunted? In today's episode, Cristina and MJ talk about paranormal stories that take place in different Oxxo stores in Mexico, a haunted piñata store in Guadalajara, Mexico and a haunted cafe. Oh and of course they had to mention Stockton, California's own haunted Burlington Coat Factory. Cristina and MJ share these stories, have some laughs, share their spooky recommendations, but first, Cristina reads a listener story. If you have a spooky story to share, email Espookytales@gmail.com or call the Espooky Hot Line (360)836-4486 Join the Espooky Tales Book Club for Busy People:  https://open.substack.com/pub/espooky/p/coming-soon?r=1b883z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web For more spooky stories, watch us on Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@espookytales Join us for movie nights on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/espooky_cristina Chat with us on Discord! https://discord.gg/4zVbvd7Hek For pictures on the places we discuss each episode, check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/espookytales/ Tweet us https://twitter.com/EspookyTales/  Support Espooky Tales on Patreon and receive bonus episodes, shout outs, stickers and more! https://www.patreon.com/Espookytales Join Espooky Tales Premium for ad free episodes and bonus episodes (like Patreon BUT it works with Spotify): https://espookytales.supercast.com/new_landing? Music: Silent Night (Dark Piano Version)-Myuu   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is likely that by the time you're hearing this Valentine's Day is either right around the corner or is tomorrow even. That means that it's the season of love so to speak and we wanted to inject some of our discussion with that today. Romances in video games are nothing new, of course, so what should we talk about? Well at the core of every romances is people. So what we'd like to break down today is what makes for good romance options in video games. What gets our engines revving with character writing and how many polygons should a butt have devoted to it? We plan to tackle all of that for you this episode!Media Discussed: The Office My Dress Up Darling Skinamarink Video Games Discussed: Lakeburg Legacies Hogwarts Legacy Meet Your Maker Arcadian Atlas Plan B Terraform Fabledom Unscripted Hi-Fi Rush Minecraft Picks Of The Week: Josh: The Art of Editing and The Snowman | Folding Ideas - YouTube Dylan: Cannons - Bad Dream As always you can find us on social media for all things Culture Bop, Hunting Pixels, and the Culture Bop family of content.Culture Bop: Instagram - @culture_bop, Youtube - youtube.com/c/CultureBopJosh: Twitter - @TheBebopman182, Instagram - @bebopman182, Twitch - The_BebopmanDylan: Twitter - @OMDizzyTV, Instagram - @omdizzy, Twitch - OMDizzy, YouTube - @OMDizzy, Austin: Twitter - @bigpappaplays, Instagram - @bigpappaplays, Twitch- @bigpappaplays, TikTok- @bigpappaplaysAnd finally, if you're looking to suppizzle the podcizzle or any of the endeavors that we're undertaking as Culture Bop, then go to Patreon.com/culturebop and toss us a pledge, we're offering some very cool perks and once we start hitting our goals even more content will be on its way.Special Shout Out To Our Patrons For Making This Podcast Possible: Justin “Arthur Weasley” Ruiss Tonny “Sirius Black” Sulmann Jeffery “Voldemort“ Szyarto Blake “Hedwig” Graham Gilbert “Lucius Malfoy ” Kitchens Sean “Professor McGonagall” O'Keeffe Jr. Bren “Tonks” Woodham Dylan “Hagrid” Martin Austin “Dobby” Stephens

At the beginning of January, there was some ✨Animal Drama✨ at the Dallas Zoo. You probably heard about it, but we sure didn't! Other topics in Episode 166 ( Morgan and Brittany's Episode) include Justin Longrus, The Lindsey's Book Club Podcast, the secret to a long life, Cryptic Notes, Yassify your Squad Queen, Reincarnated Kids?, Miss Frizzle, Lindsey literally checks her email, Lemonade Emergency, our own Zoo Stories, The Mouse House, A real life spell, and some Disembodied Laughter in a Burlington Coat Factory. Join us, won't you? Voicemails from: Eli Chambers & Cristina of the Espooky Tales Podcast - https://www.espookytales.com/ Podcast Buddies - Ye Olde Crime Podcast - https://www.yeoldecrimepodcast.com/

EP300 - GoodwillFinds CEO Matt Kaness In this interview, we cover the sale of ModCloth to Walmart, Matts's subsequent work at Lucky Brand and Afterpay, and his new role as CEO at Goodwillfinds. Goodwillfinds.com is an e-commerce site, which sells previously owned merchandise, which has been donated to Goodwill. We cover many of the tactical challenges (onboarding SKUs, product content, fulfillment, and curation), as well as the opportunities of this new "CircularCommerce" space. We also get some of Matt's predictions about what's coming next in digital commerce. Episode 300 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday January 4th, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 300 is an interview with Matt Kaness, CEO of Goodwillfinds.com. Matt was formerly on episode 79, when he was CEO of Modcloth, which later sold to Walmart. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is the much-anticipated episode number 300 being recorded on Wednesday January 4th, 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason not only is this the first show of 20:23 it's a big milestone for us with episode what better way to celebrate than having one of our oldest friends for both you and I personally but also to the show back for an update Matt kaness he was last on the show back in episode 79 I think many listeners will remember that one and certainly your mom who's one of our biggest fans and back then he was CEO of ModCloth, a lot has changed since then so we're looking forward to getting an update some of the highlights Matt help sell ModCloth to Walmart he was exact chair and interim CEO at Lucky Brand he's on several boards yeah I've been advisory to several companies and since September of 2022 he has been CEO of goodwillfinds.com Matt welcome back to the show. Matt: [1:35] Great to be here guys thanks for having me. Jason: [1:38] Oh my gosh Matt we are really excited to catch up it seems like if you factor in the pandemic your last episode was about 15 years ago if I'm and so happy I'm happy to report we've added a bunch of listeners since then so before we jump into it can you kind of remind the listeners about your background and how you got in e-commerce. Matt: [2:02] Yeah have you too I like to think about my career or having two careers to date the first one was, very foundational for what I'm doing now but very quantitative, process-oriented mechanical engineering patent law Manufacturing, Ops Consulting things that had nothing to do with retail or fashion or e-commerce and then I. [2:32] Fell into the category when I was a full-time consultant at Burton Snowboards about 16 17 years ago, and fell in love with lifestyle Brands and have, try to stay in that lane for the majority of that time period since, from Burton Snowboards I went onto Urban Outfitters was there for close to eight years up sensibly and I had a growth roll my last title there was Chief strategy officer and then from there I went to ModCloth, where I was the CEO for three years and was running the company when we sold it to Walmart I will say that, I've been in hindsight found myself attracted to these amazing consumer lifestyle brands, that are experiencing inflection points either in their business or in the industry when I was at Burton snowboarding was really for the first time finding a mass audience crossing over into, the Olympics the next games and, when I was at Urban it was the rise of Web 2.0 and I got to ride that wave my entire time there and really, I'll be on the Forefront of pioneering you know what everybody know of calls omni-channel. [3:59] ModCloth the founder of their Susan Koger was one of the pioneers of inclusive fashion and so I felt personally accountable to try to scale that and I think we, if once the industry specifically plus size women's fashion and you know today you look around and it's become pretty normative, for Brands to design into extra extra small to 4X and I'm really proud of the work we did at ModCloth being on the front end of that and then. I do some Consulting work at after pay where buy now pay later was really just becoming a thing, we're younger consumers were focused more on debit versus credit products so with really fortunate to get connected with that team and enjoyed, partnering with them and being an advisor and then you know what I'm doing now at Goodwill where secondhand is really having a moment, in the culture and getting a chance to come in and lead a ground-up startup for the Goodwill Network and helping them to. It's a digitized so to speak and you bring this new Marketplace into the world, it's just for me it's like the next chapter in that really fortunate career second career that I've had. Jason: [5:23] Very cool and I know some of those roles were Bay Area based but you are a Philly guy correct. Matt: [5:29] Philly guy born and raised I'm probably on the short list of people who have moved back to Philly twice. I was in Boston the first time when my wife became. Preggers with our oldest and we wanted to be closer to family and then the second time was when we were in the Bay Area after I left Walmart, we had a break in the action and our oldest was about to start high school and we decide we want to be back here. For the high school years but we've lived all around and I'd obviously travel a lot for work so I have an affinity for the bay area as well as some other places around the country but but Phillies the hometown. Jason: [6:14] Yeah but I'm assuming it's Philly sports teams most importantly. Matt: [6:18] I have been an eagle season ticket holders 2000 yes. Jason: [6:23] Awesome and for people that don't know Philadelphia and Pennsylvania as a whole is a is is a weird e-commerce concentration Point like there's a lot of e-commerce kind of was born or gravitated in the area so I think of like Mark Rubin and Dick's Sporting Good and in Pittsburgh and urban obviously was a huge player there was Urban your first like hardcore e-commerce experience or were you doing a lot of e-commerce at Burton. Matt: [6:56] I was not at Burton Urban is really where I started to cut my teeth on e-commerce. Direct to Consumer more than e-commerce it was really about this when I got there this billion dollar Consolidated Enterprise across there are three main brands, Urban Outfitters anthropology and Free People and the business had started as a catalog, division of what was you know let's call it 95 percent of the sales came through their store Channel. For retail versus direct to Consumer and so when I got there or there was a there was a. [7:43] 100 million Consolidated direct-to-consumer business which was split between catalog and e-commerce, but it was nascent it was not a strategic focus and then you know the founder of their dick ain't really had. This put a natural understanding of consumer behavior and where the industry was going and he had a vision for how to scale the business multi-channel and so we were all, trying to make that that future reality every day for the eight years I was there and we had a lot of success going back to your point about Pennsylvania and Philly first round capital, one of their there I believe their original headquarters and then one of their major offices, is in Philly and so I think I think a lot of it stems from their presence as well not just decaying and Reuben and some others, but also Philly from a talent perspective is kind of like a six suburb or borough of New York, where you get a lot of folks in New York and then they realize that. It's just the standard of living the cost of living is so much better in Philadelphia and so you get a lot of transplants to come down to Philly as well working in e-commerce. Jason: [9:11] Yeah and I want to say I met you I think we all met on the shop dot-org board when you were at Urban later in your your tenure Urban and some of my Fondest Memories another good friend of the show Billy met who at the time was at Abercrombie is the two of you like heckling each other about like your two brands. Matt: [9:34] Yeah like that was that was really fun for me because you know Urban. Um was pretty insular you meaning that we were so obsessively focused on the customer, and on the fashion trends and on what we were doing internally, that we never really thought about competition so we didn't spend a ton of time looking around the industry, so for me that was that was kind of a an introduction to what else was happening across the industry and then Billy occasionally would call me and say. Hey you guys make me look bad because you just had another great quarter ecomp rowing and you know your your results are now The Benchmark that I have to deliver against. But you know what I what I found in that shop or Community which is now part of NRF, is that it was not very competitive it was very collaborative I couldn't believe. [10:46] How much everybody support each other and wanted to share strategies and ideas and Etc and I think that's one of the things that really drew me into this career path on the digital Commerce side, versus pursuing merchandising or. We're kind of the brick-and-mortar offline space is it's just how, how great that the digital Community has been in the US that I've experienced so that's one of the one of the things that I try to do now is to make sure that. Making myself available I'm kind of giving back and spending time with folks and helping them along and sharing ideas because I know that you guys and others certainly do that for me way back in the day. Jason: [11:32] Yeah I feel like we all have done that for each other and I feel like we've all obviously benefited greatly from that community, and so then you leave the Eagles behind and you go join what at the time was a Founder led a venture back pure-d to see is that, a fair characterization for Vermont cough if when you. Matt: [11:58] Yes my father my father is a pure pointy Taylor yeah. Like 10,000 uniques on the site all third party. The company was vertically integrated so homegrown Ruby on Rails codebase e-commerce. Order management system warehouse management system all the way down to the call center and the warehouse it was, um pretty pioneering on the web services side as far as. [12:35] Look it was an early social commerce player as far as leveraging Pinterest and things that you could do with. Facebook and some of the other platforms Tumblr to engage customers and get them to participate in the shopping experience we were one of the first to integrate, ugc from customers into the shopping experience into the carousels on the website, um we had personalization that was driven by customer reviews that were captured in the website versus outsourced to a bizarre Voice or the like so it was the technology is pretty pioneering, the business was was very underdeveloped and the brand I felt was. Had a lot of opportunity to broaden its appeal when I got there so it was a little bit of a turnaround, financially what I'm joined which having now done this a few times there's always a reason they bring in an outside CEO. Jason: [13:44] It's not because things are just going awesome and they just want to share the awesomeness. Matt: [13:47] Yeah I can't I can't think of a single time that CEO in a business that's humming and doing great he says you know what let's bring in somebody else to do this so I. Jason: [13:57] I think Andy jassy is saying that about Amazon right now by the way. Matt: [14:02] Yeah yeah yeah what I mean there's there's a there's a lot of chatter about looking at. It was on the Facebook and Tesla and what those Founders were doing the last couple years selling stock so I think they kind of all knew what was about to happen. But you know just quickly on ModCloth I'll say that you know we were able to quickly come in. [14:32] Turn around the business financially but more importantly we pivoted it to what then was called a DM BB model, a digitally native vertical brand model which was just meant that the vertical piece that you were procuring designing selling your own product or exclusive product versus, third party which you know in the world of Amazon it's really hard to scale a business that you know what you're selling you can find on Amazon or other larger marketplaces, so we build out a design studio and sourcing operation weary platform the entire Tech stack we developed, a showroom concept similar to what we're being bonobos had developed and tested that and rolled that out and had a really aggressive growth plan against that we went out to raise money and her wound up, getting an offer from the team at jet.com that 6-month previous had, I've been sold to Walmart and they came in and made an offer and the board accepted it and so we sold it. And and I stayed on at Walmart for a year and oversaw our integration into that that ecosystem. Scot: [15:51] Cool the that was kind of a chain reaction right where you guys several companies they Acquired and did you play a role in kind of that roll up. Matt: [16:01] We were like the third or fourth of six or seven Acquisitions and they did within a year and a half two year period. And then as part of my year there I did get involved in some of their business development MMA, conversations and and I did spend a little bit of time helping them, on one of the further Acquisitions but you know they what I learned about Walmart when I was there is. They have such a strong culture they have a real clear view of who their customer is and why they're serving them and you know I would tell you that. The Acquisitions that spray that they went on those two years was really a catalyst for. Something that W Mellon said at a meeting that I attended where he talked about convenience. [17:03] Being valued as much as low-cost in the kind of the online or multi-channel retail environment versus pre-internet, and so they had to find a catalyst under Mark Lori to accelerate their the cultural change, to understand how customers writ large were valuing convenience as much as low-cost when their Heritage had been, Yoda Point technology to make improvements in supply chain and sourcing and Merchandising so that they could always win on price now they had a win on price and convenience, and so though the individual Acquisitions You could argue whether there was an Roi on them or not against the purchase price. I would say that. Internally it was a massive success in creating that kind of cultural change that Doug. Mandated from. Mark and and then you know I was only there a year and I left but just watching what progressed and if you look at the moldable on Walmart stock I think it's hard to argue that it wasn't a success. Scot: [18:18] Yes tricky with Acquisitions you can't just look at the you know the interior ModCloth business you have to look at the whole halo effect and the stock price yeah there's a multi-faceted way to look at these things that's kind of complicated. Matt: [18:32] Yeah I think any business that they could grow if you could grow organically in definitely I think most businesses would do that there's a reason why companies you know use MMA to your point. Scot: [18:46] Did some point I think I saw a ModCloth working to the stores where you there for that. Matt: [18:53] No no that I left before any of those kind of process integration initiatives occurred. Scot: [19:03] Yeah and then didn't they do they sell it back out do they spin it. Matt: [19:08] Yeah they sold it back out there were some after I left there were some further leadership changes that occurred and and they wound up the best thing it and selling it to I want to say it was a fermented New York. Scot: [19:23] Like a private Equity Firm or another. Matt: [19:24] Yeah I think so yeah. Scot: [19:28] Did you didn't want to jump in there and take it over again usually they call the previous CEO I bet there's an 80% chance you got a call. Matt: [19:37] No comment. Scot: [19:41] All right we found something you don't want to talk about good it's part of my goal on this show is to see if we can we can find that you have any family safe Mark Lori stories I've spent a fair amount of time with him he's a he's a pretty wacky dude. Matt: [19:56] I mean I didn't spend that much time working for him but I mean man like talk about somebody who just has total belief in himself and the team and what's possible, and so much energy for. For Commerce for startups for Innovation so I mean it's it was contagious working for him, um working for his team's I wanted to takeaways I had for my time at Walmart and my time working with. [20:32] With Mark and his jet team is I just didn't have that kind of passion for the mass-market the way that, you had to have to be successful working at a Walmart or working at a jet before the acquisition, yeah I love the specialty space I love you know the Branded premium space I love, Yoda kind of the Middle Market where it's not based on price and it's not luxury it's somewhere in between. I just find that that it's super creative there's lots of opportunities for differentiation. There's always new things that you get to learn but you know Walmart I got there was a camera don't quote me on the exact number but. [21:27] Like there was a conversation about like how many millions of American flags are they going to sell between Memorial Day and and. And Fourth of July. [21:38] On one of their promos and I was just like I couldn't even fathom the scale of having to move that many units and so, yep so for me it was kind of a validation of the lane that I've been in and and enjoyed being in and so when I left. Eventually wind up going to Lucky that was kind of part of the calculus on my part was to get back into the into that that category that Wayne of specialty. Scot: [22:07] My one of my first Mark Laurie experiences I was at Jet and he was telling us how the Company motto was billions or body bags and I was like that's kind of a weird way to motivate, and then I talked to several employees I was like how do you like it here and there like billions of body bags that like they were just like it was a mantra like you know that they were just so focused on it was either going to be 0 or this huge outcome and sure enough it was billions. Matt: [22:31] Yeah there's there's definitely I mean I think think he was a successful High School athlete so there's definitely a lot of rah-rah with with him in the team it's that's not my personality I. ModCloth one of the investors accused me of being two column in the boardroom. They said you know Matt if you had slammed on the table a little bit more you know and I'm sitting there like like. That's the that never crossed my mind trying to make an argument to do something required me slamming my hand on the table. Scot: [23:14] A tantrum yeah. Matt: [23:15] My voice yeah but maybe that's Versa tween you know a founder and yeah an operator. Jason: [23:23] Scot was definitely a table Slammer. Matt: [23:25] I don't believe you. Scot: [23:26] Like man I have an engineering background and they drummed that out of us in those four years. Matt: [23:33] Totally yeah I think you're right I think the scientific method does not allow for that that level of emotion that come into into the argument. Jason: [23:44] Yeah but I will say a lot of mechanical things can be fixed by hitting them with a hammer I will, the so I'm super grateful that you guys didn't throw Mark Glory under the table because I at the moment have to totally pandor to him because his new business he has Starbucks trucks that will drive to your house and deliver coffee to your house, so I like I feel like I need to stay in his good graces, but so so the sale happens you transition out of ModCloth you've you've got kids in college and or in school and no source of free clothing so I'm guessing that's what drove the, you're interesting lucky brands. Matt: [24:28] Yeah well I got to say. When I worked at Urban my wife definitely took advantage of the anthropology discount. [24:43] And I act funny funny and true story, when I was considering the opportunity at ModCloth I was having a couple other conversations in the in the fashion space. And I showed my daughter who at the time was probably about seven or eight I showed her the apps for the shopping apps for, the three businesses that I was talking to and I won't say who but there was one in particular based in La that she was like Dad no way she was like you cannot work selling that fashion. But she approved of ModCloth and so so I got her endorsement so yeah when I went to Lucky it's really I wasn't necessarily looking. You're back into fashion as much as I really thought that there was this route there's a unique opportunity with lucky they were. Over a billion in gmv which is to say the direct to Consumer wholesale and the value of their licensing business in the market was over a billion dollars. So brand revenues and net revenue is like call it 650 million and it was independent. [26:08] And there were not a lot of businesses at that scale. In the u.s. that still were independent versus part of a conglomerate. [26:21] And we're had already gone public and so I had been friendly with one of the partners at Wintergreen. Who called me about the opportunity and after spending some time with them talking about it I said. You really need somebody in LA full time in the arts district where they were headquartered and I'm not moving to LA and moving actually back east and they said. Hey would you come in and manage the company to get us through holiday while we won for somebody. And also give us a strategy like a like a financial model a business case three-year strategy. And so that's how I initially got involved there was more as like a board advisor interim manager and then. By January of twenty I'd really seen this amazing Lane. For an older Millennial younger Gen-X. That we could reposition Lucky Brand to be a cause marketer the company did a tremendous amount of good work in Downtown LA taking. Old Denim and. [27:50] Giving it. Nonprofits that work with the homeless population there for clothing to for installation. And then other other efforts to help that population, and so I felt like we could reposition lucky to not mean like going to the casino getting lucky but meaning gratitude. Like I feel lucky I made it I have the ability to spend a hundred dollars in a pair of jeans and I want to support. [28:27] This this amazing company that does all this good work and so. That I had this vision for how you could reposition the brand the business was running like it was 2005 as far as. Go to market so there was a lot of heavy lifting that had to be done around digital transformation around merchandising around. Rationalizing the stores there was way too much discount so there's a lot of work to do, but I got really excited about the opportunity and wound up agreeing to stay on as exact chair in January 2020. And part of my remit would have been to hire a CEO and partner with that individual and I had to kill people in my network that I thought would be great for it who be willing to move to LA. But two months later the covid walk down start. And then it turned into something you know completely different than we were just trying to survive we lost ninety percent of our revenue and that April. And we wound up. [29:43] Making it through to July August that summer but at that point yeah the damage had been done and the private Equity Firm decided to. Sell it to a party that had been interested in the business for a number of years which was authentic Brands group out of New York so I stayed on to oversee that process and then once the deal is done I. Said that was a lot of work I'm exhausted and wound up turning down the opportunity to stay on with a b g and left but, I got to say I'm really grateful thankful for the team that I had there because they were amazing, to work with during such a difficult period that that Q2. And early summer of 2020 it was it was really really challenging to be in the market and I learned a lot about myself as a leader from it. Jason: [30:46] Oh my gosh I I am sure you did I'm laughing though because you think about all the work involved there and so you decided to do something easier in your next gig like oh I don't know like starting from scratch business in the middle of a really old non-profit. Matt: [31:08] Well I gotta say you know after after the lucky experience. Um I really felt drained I didn't have. The passion for retail for e-commerce digital for. Brands for fashion like I had for the previous you know well 15 years and. I was fortunate that I have the ability to do this but I basically gave myself 2021 off. I've been sitting on a few boards I did some Consulting work I had been Angel Investing for a few years so I had a number of startup Founders and CEOs that I was mentoring and Advising, and I just said to myself I really need to get re-inspired I need to like, get back out in the market broadly see what's happening see where the Innovation is occurring and and, get excited but also get lucky because a lot of these things from a career perspective is based on timing I was really fortunate that. [32:27] I went to Urban when I did I was really fortunate to be part of, ModCloth the journey during the years that was there the year that I was at Walmart was a really critical year in the Amazon the Walmart Battle. Um amazing timing too. Be available to do Consulting work with the after pay the exact summer that the founder moved from Australia to San Francisco. So you know I'm acutely aware that you can't control timing and, and yet the kind of put yourself out there so that was my plan last year and in doing so what I realized was I'm like I get the most energy and I do my best work when, back in the phase of a company where it's. [33:22] Focused on growth and Innovation and so no more turnarounds the end of Lucky business was a turnaround. ModCloth was a pseudo turn around, so I just said you know I want to get back to you know that stage where it's really about solving for customer needs and Market positioning and Prague service Innovation and deploying technology, and then a couple that with also wanted to get in a part of retail where I can learn. And you know secondhand what's happening right now the this whole cultural phenomenon around thrifting, and you're the pioneering work of a thread up and a real real Poshmark deep op-ed see ya the last decade, that was the that was the heavy lifting you know those Founders you know basically creating the category, but now there's a critical mass now there's a consumer acceptance so I don't see it as it as a, as hard as maybe it looks like from the outside it's I think it's the timing is great for the Goodwill Network to Rally around this new platform for us. As a separate entity to stand up this new company to launch this new Marketplace. [34:48] There's definitely engineering challenges to figuring out how do you successfully profitably scale. Um second-hand and vintage when you know every item is unique and we have a distributed model where our sellers are. Various. Goodwill members across the u.s. so we're not centralized so there's definitely some some challenges but to me that's part of the fun that's part of the learning. Jason: [35:18] I can imagine I want to take just half a step backwards to make sure the listeners are tracking with exactly what you're doing now because I think it's super interesting so, formal title is CEO of goodwillfinds and goodwillfinds is a new offering from Goodwill that is selling Goodwill Merchant previously owned Goodwill merchandise via a website is that the in my clothes. Matt: [35:44] Yeah yeah so I think it's worth kind of spelling out the context a little bit because it took me a little bit honestly to fully understand it and grasp it. Goodwill has been around for over 100 Years everybody knows Goodwill it's an amazing nonprofit franchise. There is a I call it a holding company I don't know that that's the right. Firm but there is a parent company that owns the Goodwill Master license in Metro DC and they have. License out the brand to I believe the numbers 155, individual territories across the u.s. and each of those territories have, Goodwill organization with their own leadership team their own operations around treasury their own board of directors obviously they vary in. Size and location and specification and you know mix the revenue and all those things but they all share the same Mission and the mission a Goodwill is. [36:57] To enhance lives for the Dignity of work, and it's my older brother was born with a disability and I've watched him go on and off disability a few times in his life and I tell you, that he's his best self when he's working. So when I first got connected with the folks at Goodwill earlier last year it really touched my heart like I really. I wanted this to be successful for them because I know how important their mission is but as I got to learn more about the network. [37:37] Of 155 Goodwill's and more about the opportunity and there are six founding. Good we'll see EOS that came together to organize this new separate entity called goodwillfinds where a virtual Delaware company. And those six are the ones that are the board that I report to and they've been working on this for years they were, ready to watch this last year and decided that they needed to hire a CEO, to come in build a team set up the company oversee the launch so I joined pre-revenue and we're now in our fourth month of selling, the consumer response has been. Unbelievable sales are more than doubling month-over-month it's it's really. A unique opportunity to build something that is not only. [38:39] In a part of retail that is innovating and growing and scaling rapidly but it's also doing it for this amazing Mission and you know really trying to redefine what does. Nonprofit in the circular economy look like to deliver social impact at scale so I feel like that's the Mandate that I signed up for and the team that I'm building. And the business model that we're designing right now to go with the marketplace are the is the execution of that but the bigger Vision here is to create this platform that not only. [39:24] Overtime all 155 Goodwill members will have access to be on as sellers but that. For the first time we'll have decentralized marketing funnel brands. Strategy content messaging 1p data and then. [39:48] But technical roadmap that were able to deploy that will integrate with the store operations and the back of house operations that will allow for scared investments in technology that all the good wolf can take advantage of. On the consumer side I think all the players and secondhand have the same goal which is to make the. [40:10] The option to buy second-hand versus new so compelling and so convenient and so exciting and cool. That more and more consumption dollars go towards second hand and move away from New and by, doing that, it has this incredibly measurable impact on the environment in creating sustainable. Impact and then in our case you add to it. The fact that every net dollar that we collect from our sales go back to the location where the Goodwill was the item was donated to fund the Goodwill programs I mean it's I feel like we're pioneering, this new this new kind of business model for circularity and so all that to me is like super compelling super interesting, and I'm really fortunate that this opportunity found me. Scot: [41:19] Cool hearing you talk about it I can tell you like to build stuff the channel visor we had a lot of customers that were kind of in this General space the challenge with this use Consignment World Is You Gotta you know I'm sure these Goodwills are getting, they're only going to sell online a fraction of what comes in so you got to figure out what what things do you want to sell in the store versus online you gotta create digital assets which are the descriptions and the pictures and then you gotta you know imagine you're not going to send them to a central location so then you've got to create a shipping method that works down at the store level how are you guys solving all those problems at scale. Matt: [42:00] Yeah well I'll tell you a couple of things and you're exactly right there's a ton of operational challenges we have a couple things going for us one. These Goodwills already have the physical infrastructure they already have, donation centers they already have Micro warehouses that are already selling online as a three-piece seller through Amazon and eBay and some other Regional marketplaces, so they have a lot of these physical operations setup, so we're leveraging that and we're not having to deploy Capital to do it. That's 12 there's a there's a maturity in the technology vendor Market you'd be surprised at how many. Providers are in the space to automate. We have a partner that we work with that leverages Google Lens technology and Leverage is the Einstein a I was Salesforce that allows us to, take a lot of the heavy lifting out of item creation we have vendors that we work with that. [43:15] Take images of items three-dimensional scans that send it to and Outsource in India where descriptions are being written for these items you know so there's, and I'm learning this right but you'd be shocked at how much software deployment automation deployment already exists. [43:38] So we're managing that to deploy in a way that integrates into these existing operations at and. The other thing that we have an advantage of is because we are nonprofit. [43:53] We're selling primarily me exclusively right now but overtime will be primarily selling donated items which have. Is this not a zero cost of goods but it's a near zero cost of goods. So we have room in the margin line to play with value-added services on each item, if we feel like there's a lift that we can justify with that you know with respect to photography with respect to. Metadata on each of the items with respect to Howard thinking about tagging, there's a lot there's a lot of players out there that we're evaluating right now and we watched with. [44:42] Over 100,000 unique items back in the first week of October. Mid-December we were at nearly 200,000 items. And our roadmap is to have a million unique items in our active. Catalog by October of this year so this entire endeavor. Has been from the start designed for scale. So we feel like that's giving us an advantage because we're able to do some things that, other startups that are venture-backed that are having to start from scratch with a lot of that infrastructure that have a cost of sourcing and and Supply acquisition that we don't, it would be financially prohibitive for them to make some of the Investments that we're making right now. Scot: [45:43] Yeah it's interesting to hear you say you're using some of the AI Jason's not a believer in AI but I'm a big proponent. Jason: [45:50] Haha I haven't said a word on this whole podcast I've just been using my AI Avatar. Scot: [45:57] Ugh. Matt: [45:58] For the record this isn't Matt talking this is Matt's chat TPT talking. Jason: [46:04] Yeah we tested both in the shed she'd Beatty was much more Salient so we went with that. [46:17] Yeah so it's interesting to me mad because, you mentioned a lot of the early Pioneers in our e-commerce and by the way just from buzzword Bingo like are you re Commerce person or you like do you have a favorite label for what you're doing now. Matt: [46:34] Yeah I'm. I'm back in the the interview circuit right now trying to get the word out about what we're doing and promoting the Goodwill Mission so I'm still trying some phrases on I mean yeah RI Commerce is definitely. [46:50] What. The buzzword but I think what we're doing at goodwillfinds and and in partnership with the Goodwill network is really about circularity you know in my mind's eye. Getting a Marketplace standing up a new Marketplace from the zero. You know it's the old Beezus flywheel the back of the napkin that I think about every day and in my version of it their supply demand admission and without the mission we don't get supply. And the better job we do partnering with our members sellers in acquiring the right Supply and and listing it. In a high-quality way, you know then that allows us to be able to meet demand in the market which the proceeds from those sales go right back to the Goodwill where we got the donation and there's the kind of the flywheels complete, and one of the stories around that and this is what we have to do a better job. [47:52] This year versus last year's to get these stories these amazing stories about the Goodwill Network out into the world, the more successful we are Google finds meaning the more that we're able to sell and scale demand. The more people each of the Goodwill sellers have to hire in their e-commerce operations. Because they're doing the listings they're doing the pick pack and ship on the on the outbound but those jobs are higher skill and they and they pay better. And so it actually accelerates the local mission. [48:27] The more successful we are because they have to hire more people and bring more people and train them into these higher value jobs that then they go get placed somewhere else they can go work within. The digital economy you know the digital retail industry and so we really I really think about what we're doing as pioneering circularity. We also are talking to some retailers and Brands you want to partner with us on they're both on the demand and supply side and part of it is because we're a nonprofit that there's a tax, right up Advantage for them but it's there's also this, PSG component to the large corporates that they have to think about especially in, in apparel where they had to think about you know what is their end to end environmental impact and. [49:27] It's it's really I can't believe the timing of this but it's really a moment right now not just with consumers but in the industry and so that's another aspect of circularity where you have. Yeah it's not Nike so but I'll just use them as an example to speak of Austria of Lee imagine Nike telling their full price customers. That they can buy second-hand Nike at goodwillfinds.com. Or imagine a Chanel it's not Chanel so I'll just use them electrically but imagine them. [50:04] Wanting to use us as their authentication partner so that when you find second-hand should now at goodwillfinds.com versus a real real or somewhere else, you can you can you know that you have this objective third-party authenticator that you can partner with to control, the the brand experience in the second hand market so it's, I'm really excited about the possibilities and and we have a really big vision for what we're doing I don't I think we Commerce to me feels, like a term that soap a little bit Limited. Jason: [50:41] Totally fair so maybe circular Commerce its, it's interesting to me though like so we've had a bunch of those Founders from the circular Commerce. Brands on and like their fundamental problem is not your fundamental like their biggest problem is sourcing, the goods by getting people to send them stuff and then when they curate it they're mostly interested in, luxury designer so they end up with a relatively poor yield and they don't have. [51:13] Any monetization or you know frankly like a ecologically redeeming way to deal with, all the goods they get that aren't they don't meet their criteria so it's like you you seem like they're like through the Goodwill Network you've got all these stores to put Goods in you've got a bunch of you do have luxury consumers that are searching for vintage and value but you also have more pure value consumers you it just seems like it's a really interesting fit because you saw some of the, problems that are endemic to the re Commerce guys you've got the first gen, Val you guys like the you know the fast fashion guys who are you know of course making stuff cheap but it's a psychological disaster and they only sell like half of it and the other half ends up in a landfill and all that and then you've got the, discount guys who I think is the funniest of all I don't know if you follow this but Burlington Coat Factory, right before the pandemic shut down their e-commerce and they shut it down because they fundamentally couldn't solve what you're doing like they couldn't figure out how to cost effectively make, product detail pages for all the super thin inventory that they had and so it just interesting like, because you built this business on top of the Google Network it feels like you got a nice sort of Head Start in the in all three corners of that problem if you will. Matt: [52:36] Yeah Jason so first off I know a lot of the players the founders execs at those other places and, again I want them all to be successful because the more successful the category is it's a tide that will lift all boats and I think we're all being led by the consumer who is voting yes yes yes, I also think that the consumer, um is not just the the deal Seeker the value Seeker but it really is a trend ribbon, style driven younger consumer who if you think about you know the. [53:19] Tick Tock and Instagram and this this viral social world that we live in where you nobody wants to look the same, wearing the same things that shopping vintage and second-hand is actually a way to differentiate yourself and show your, your individual style so it's there's a really interesting marriage there between second hand and kind of social morality, and what's happening there and then there's also a tell you a more affluent customer or aspirational customer who could Shop full price and does Shop full price but they really care about, about the impact in the narrative and they want to talk about the story, where they bought it not just what they bought and so there's it feels like there's this really. [54:15] Great timing of all three customer segments and then the last thing I tell you is compared to the Discounters. Do I have read about some of them struggling, with figuring out e-commerce and I think I've read the rational rationalization was that it's hard to do Discovery online versus in the store. What I would tell you is that what we're doing augments the in-store thrifting experience at goodwillfinds, now if you're shopping Goodwill at your local store. The assortment is very limited it's what just showed up that week or that month as far as donations go but, you can do that because there are certain categories of people like to touch and feel or try on because fit matters or Texture and finish and, and material matter you know how home goods and furniture and the like one of those big bulky items that you know are easier to buy and store but to be able to couple that with. [55:29] Now shopping you know I don't want to say the best but the that e-commerce. Assortment of other Goodwills across the country. We're now you're getting access to donations from New York to LA Seattle to Miami, Chicago to Austin and I mean wow like what a treasure Trove to be able to shop your Goodwill store and go online and get access to all these thrift stores in one place, in our case I think it's a massive value add and. Given the fact that the Goodwill brand has been around for 100 years and already has tens of millions of customers shopping their stores you know our primary focus to start is how do we, how do we complement the in-store shopping experience to those tens of millions of customers to convert them to be multi-channel customers with the brand, and at the same time how do we compete in the market too. [56:38] Solicit this this these other two audiences that I mentioned the style and Trend driven younger consumer that's looking for vintage that's looking for. For differentiated as well as this this aspirational and more affluent customer who loves the loves the purpose loves the mission loves the story of circularity and wants to participate. Scot: [57:03] Cool sounds like your you're fired up and it's going to be exciting to watch the progress we're running up against time but while we have you you've been that this over 15 years the whole e-commerce retail thing what are some of the other Trends you're watching other than this circular kind of recycling element anything anything interesting on your radar for example do you think the digitally native vertical brand thing has played out or is that still got legs any other trends that are interesting to you. Matt: [57:36] Yeah well on DM BB which just a an iteration of DTC. Did you see to me was always a go to market strategy was never a business model. Scot: [57:47] Yeah. Matt: [57:49] The the early players the first movers in that space who did the, you know go to the source and sell an item at the wholesale price versus the retail price because you're cutting out the middleman Zappos is kind of one of the one of the pioneers of that, um That was a momentum thing I've always viewed and again kind of sticking to my knitting here in this specialty premium you know Market space. I've always viewed, yeah the brand equity which is what we're all striving to create and grow and maintain. It gets generated by picking an attractive customer, that you want to obsess about and I don't and attractive I mean somebody that you think is a viable there's enough of them and they're viable to have a long-term relationship with. [58:56] And obsessing about them to the point where you understand their needs better than they and you can create differentiated product and service, where, they fall in love with your Solutions with your customer experience and they want to tell their friends and then you couple that with the right distribution, so that you can find more people like them which allows you to scale in an efficient manner and direct-to-consumer now going back 15 years, was just the new go to market to find more like-minded customers to ones that you already had so urban urban already had amazingly strong brands with a lot of brand equity, so what we did writing the Web 2.0 wave was really just figuring out you know how do we, how do we reach the same or similar customers and give them a better experience a different experience online than what they experience in store, and then Mark what was the opposite I got there and we had no physical experience and so the exercise was how do we take this brand love that exists. [1:00:07] At this website and and translate it into a three-dimensional experience that, the existing customers would love but would allow us to expand our market and introduce the brand and more people so I yeah so I don't I never saw DM BB by itself as a sustainable business model. [1:00:27] As far as other Trends in the market today I when I left Walmart I did a talk. [1:00:37] Where I said I felt like it was an amazing time, to start a brand and I really meant it and I really believe that the market was was so like there's so much sameness in the market that. That there's a huge opportunity for four new brands coming to the market Leverage The technologies that have matured and and really differentiate against the incumbents I tell you sitting here right now after. I feel like consumers. [1:01:12] Have now accepted the fact that their multi-line store is where they shop for everything. The whole idea of this retailers essential and that one's not and those shutdowns for a year plus I think really changed consumer. Perception of where's viable to shop the where it's not and I and so I think the bigger players, have a massive advantage in this market especially this year with inflation continuing going into a recession I think it's I think this year is going to be really hard, for smaller players to differentiate and survive so that's more from a consumer lens. From a technology lens I'm sorry to say Jason but I'm a big believer in AI, and I think it's early days and what I counseled a lot of folks who are earlier in their career is find a mega technology trend, in the market that you can get passionate about learning that you think is early Innings and ride it. [1:02:17] I certainly did that with e-commerce I was. They're early with the that whole Social Mobile Local, moment you know that was existing after the iPhone and Facebook launched, I'm I feel like marketplaces are like halfway up the s-curve I feel like there's still a lot more room to grow and so I'm working on that technology curve right now with goodwillfinds. But I would say that I don't I'm not a Believer it in web 3.0 today it feels like, the.com in the late 90s where it was five years too early, there just weren't enough participants to make it viable I think web 3.0 in whatever form it takes is five years out before becomes something that you could commercially work on. And then you know I'd say I think the subscription in. In a lot of categories is having a lot of success right now which is less about technology and more about, business model but that's that's that's an area as well that I think is worth exploring for a lot of businesses that are trying to figure out ways to monetize Their audience. Jason: [1:03:40] Matt that is awesome, basically we're mostly aligned I'm 100% with you on a I I'm also with you on web 3 / metaverse being too early the one thing I'm gonna just for the record disagree on is I I can't public admit that marketplaces are thing because that'll that'll go to Scott said too much if we admit that. But, it's going to surprise no one mat that has happened again we've used slightly more than our allotted time so we're gonna leave it with those words of wisdom from you as always if listeners found value from this show we sure would love it if you'd jump on iTunes and leave us that five star review but Matt, so awesome to reconnecting and congrats on everything you're doing it's it's fun to watch and and put your point like it's also adding a heck of a lot of value to the world. Matt: [1:04:33] Guys I really appreciate the time always great to reconnect congrats on the pot I'm a huge fan and let's do it again at number five hundred. Scot: [1:04:44] Sounds good Matt if folks want to find you online or you on the on MySpace where do you hang out. Matt: [1:04:52] Yeah have you heard of Tumblr no. Um yeah I would just say if anybody needs to get ahold of me reach out through Linkedin and my contact information is there. Scot: [1:05:06] Sounds good we really appreciate taking time and good luck with the new Venture sounds really exciting. Matt: [1:05:11] Thanks guys. Jason: [1:05:12] And until next time happy commercing.

Our guest this episode is Alissa Bartlett. Harnessing the power of marketing, technology, supply chain, and leadership development, Alissa ensures that startups and small businesses are putting out quality products that are needed in the marketplace. More important, especially for Alissa over the past few years she has become a staunch advocate for inclusion and diversity. I was singularly impressed that Alissa understands, especially in our current environment, the difference, and the importance of moving from diversity to inclusion.   Alissa also is a supporter of Conscious Capitalism. What is that? Listen and discover as she describes the concepts around it.   Alissa's stories and thoughts are entertaining, but they also are quite informative. I hope you enjoy this episode and will send me your thoughts.   About the Guest: Harnessing the power of marketing, technology, supply chain, and leadership development, Alissa ensures that startups and small businesses are putting out quality products that are needed in the marketplace. As a Senior Consultant with A. Bartlett Services, she's currently working with Authentify Art, a startup who brings trust to the entire art ecosystem by securely connecting physical and digital art to its verified provenance and due diligence data. Leveraging her CliftonStrengths of WOO, Communication, Includer, Positivity, and Connectedness, Alissa is the Director of Product Quality for Authentify Art, working with products such as RFID tags for art and an IoT environmental conditions tracker.    From 2018 to 2021, Alissa served as the VP, Volunteer Experience for the American Marketing Association, Minnesota chapter where she recruited and retained a team of diverse, engaged, talented volunteers. During this time Alissa also served on the nation-wide Professional Chapters Council DEI committee, where she worked with leaders from AMA chapters across the US to improve DEI policies and practices.    Also a member of the Conscious Capitalism Twin Cities community, Alissa believes that businesses have both the opportunity as well as the imperative to elevate humanity. This can be done by creating organizations that follow 4 tenets: Higher Purpose, Stakeholder Integration, Conscious Leadership, and Conscious Culture & Management.    How to Connect with Alissa: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alissa-n-bartlett    About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:20 Welcome once again to unstoppable mindset. Thanks for joining us wherever you happen to be today is summer is basically almost here. And that's a good thing. We're supposed to have hot record records. Whoa, I can't talk today. We're supposed to have hot weather here in Victorville California, it's only going to be about 100. And that's just the start. Anyway, I'd like you to meet Alissa Bartlett, who is a leader in dealing with all things marketing and a lot of different ways. And you're going to learn about that in the course of the day. So listen, thanks for joining us on unstoppable mindset.   Alissa Bartlett  01:58 Friday. Michael, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.   Michael Hingson  02:01 Well, it's our honor to have you. Why don't we start a little bit by you discussing kind of your life a little bit where you came from you growing up and all the usual sorts of things so that people can get to know you a little better.   Alissa Bartlett  02:14 Sure. So I grew up in Oakland, California, I have to say go warriors, because my parents are rooting very hard for the basketball team today.   Michael Hingson  02:27 day could be the day   Alissa Bartlett  02:28 today could be the day today, hopefully will be the day. So I grew up in Oakland, spent most of my time growing up between Oakland and Berkeley. Little bit ventured to San Francisco, but not too much. That's considered you know, the other side of the bay. So there's kind of a divide there. I went to a university down in San Diego at the University of California, San Diego, where I majored in psychology and human development. I graduated from UCSD in 2004. And I got an amazing job working for a nonprofit called the Center for Creative Leadership. They are a leadership development firm specializing in leadership development, training and coaching. And they also do a ton of research and, and publications around leadership. It was a great place to start my career, I learned a ton and got exposed to a lot of wonderful content and mentors. And that was really great. After being there for two years, I took on a role as a consultant. And I was doing supply chain and logistics consulting for fortnight. And my main client at the time was proflowers.com. And that was a really good gig. I had some other clients including fox racing, Burlington Coat Factory, as well as all clad which was really fun, we actually got to see how they the process that they go through to clad the metals together and create their pots and their pans and everything like that. So that was really fun. I was traveling all over the country for three years with that job, then decided I wanted to get off the road. So took on a role working for a small marketing research firm called Market lab. Market lab was an entirely remote position. So I went from being on the road every week to working from home. And that was of course working from home back before it was the cool thing to do as it is today. So I was doing project management and then I was managing a team of project managers. And then I was managing the whole operation of the company. And then finally I was doing sales and business development and and project direction for the company. So that was great for 10 years and then I decided that working From Home was just too hard on me being the extrovert that I am. And so I wanted to get back to a job where I was going into an office. So I found a company called improving. And they're a technology management and consulting firm. And they have an office here in Minnesota in Bloomington. So the commute was about 45 minutes for me from Stillwater, but I didn't really mind because I really liked the job, and I loved the company. And I was in a sales role. And so after three months being at improving, and starting to feel like I was getting the hang of the sales role, the pandemic hit. And so all of a sudden, I could no longer meet with people in person, we couldn't hold our in person events that we would do for marketing, I had to be working from home again, rather than going into an office. And it got really hard to do my job. So I struggled through another year or two of that, and got to the point where it, it was just really hard to do a sales job for a company that I was so new to and an industry that I was so new to. And then an opportunity came along for me to do some contract work with a former client of mine. So I mentioned that I had worked at proflowers. And my client, there was a man named Curtis McConnell. And he   Alissa Bartlett  06:27 had had gone out on his own and started a company called authentic by art. They're an art technology firm. And what that means is that they have a platform that that is used to manage art. It's kind of like Zillow, but for the art world used to manage art as assets. And you can have a profile of your artist and all their artwork and have upload documents that are all the supporting documents to prove the authenticity of the artwork. And they have a number of other supporting products around that that primary platform, including ID tags for art. So these are RFID tags, utilizing Near Field Communication, or NFC technology, as well as using UHF or ultra high frequency technology. So these tags can be used for tracking artwork, also for doing inventory on on a collection of art. And also for providing enhanced digital experiences to go with viewing a physical work of art. We also have an IoT tracker that tracks the environmental conditions around a work of art, including temperature, humidity, light, gyration, air quality, air pressure, and things like that. So it's kind of like a Fitbit for RT. And we can use that data to generate alerts that get triggered when something is above or below a certain threshold. So if it's getting above 90 degrees, you can have an alert get kicked off that says, hey, there may be a fire. Or if it's getting above 90% humidity, you're gonna have an alert that kicks off that says, you know, that says, hey, there may be a flood or a burst pipe here. And so these are all things that the insurance companies really care about when they're insuring the paintings because these are all things that will compromise the quality and the value of the work of art.   Michael Hingson  08:38 So what is it that you do relating to that?   Alissa Bartlett  08:42 I'm in? Yeah, I'm, I'm serving as the Director of Product quality. So what that means is I'm responsible for the quality of the products, including the tags and the art tracker, and as as well as the platform itself.   Michael Hingson  09:02 So I'm curious, you went to UCSD. I was up the road at UC Irvine, although before you. So how did you get from there? And Oakland, California to Minnesota? Oh,   Alissa Bartlett  09:16 that's a really good question. So, um, during the time that I worked for market lab, where I was working from home, I was fortunate enough to have three children. So we had one, we had one kid in 2012. And then in 2015, we became pregnant with twins. And so we ended up with three kids and we were living in a two bedroom one bath, California bungalow that we were renting. And so looking around at you know what there was available for us to buy the housing market in the Bay Area is just so bonkers that we really didn't feel like we could afford the space that we need it. Meanwhile, my husband grew up in Minnesota, and we would come to visit His family out here. And I always loved coming out to visit. And so on our last trip, we, you know, I just said to him, I think we should consider moving back to Minnesota. And he said, Well, what do you mean back? You've never lived there. And I said, well, but you know, you live there. And that's like, basically the same thing. And I think we should consider moving there. And he was pretty resistant to the idea. You know, he was like, I made it out of California. Why would I want to go back to Minnesota? I mean, I mean, I made it out to California. And I said, Well, why don't you just look at what we can afford and get back to me. So he looked at houses online. So we were in California at the time. And he looked at houses online. And the third house he looked at was just our perfect dream home. It was the type of house we always talked about wanting, you know, the layout, the location of it, everything was just perfect. And so I found a realtor and I said, Hey, I want to buy this house. And the realtor said, Great. And my inlaws came and did a tour, and they did like a FaceTime tour of it. So we could see the house on FaceTime. And they said it looked good. We trust their judgment. And so we made an offer on the house, and it was accepted. And we moved in, and the whole process took less than two months. Wow.   Michael Hingson  11:25 Yeah. And probably a whole lot more affordable in terms of price.   Alissa Bartlett  11:30 per square foot, it was about 1/8 of the price of what a home in Cal, California would   Michael Hingson  11:36 have cost. Yeah. which counts for a lot. Needless to say, yeah. So   Alissa Bartlett  11:40 we basically got three times the space that we had for a third of the price.   Michael Hingson  11:44 And you're happy back in Minnesota with all the cold weather and the snow and all that.   Alissa Bartlett  11:49 Yeah, I love it having grown up. Not really having seasons. I do like the seasons and the changing of the seasons, it makes me feel like I live in a completely different place every three months. So I think that's really fun. And right now we've got gorgeous, whether it's in the 70s. Or maybe it's up to the 80s. Now, you know, beautiful green and lush and you know, water everywhere. And you know, it's not it's not the California desert. But we're getting close to California temperatures now. And it's really nice.   Michael Hingson  12:25 Yeah, but this too shall pass   Alissa Bartlett  12:27 it Sure well, and it'll get cold again. But the snow can be fun, too. We like to we like to ski and do other kinds of outdoor activities in the snow like sledding and building snowman and having snowball fights.   Michael Hingson  12:40 There you go. Well, you have along the way become sort of active in the whole concept of diversity, equity and inclusion. How did that happen?   Alissa Bartlett  12:51 So I'm growing up in Oakland and Berkeley, I was always exposed to a pretty diverse group of people. So my best friend from elementary school is black. My best friend from high school is Asian. And I just was always surrounded by people with different backgrounds. For me, I was raised Jewish. But I was surrounded by people of all different religious backgrounds and people with you know, no religious affiliation whatsoever. And I was always just surrounded by diversity. And so I never really thought much about it. Until, let's see, it was about 2017 When we were attending a Unitarian Universalist Church, and we were exposed to the work of Robyn D'Angelo and her work around white fragility. And she was talking about progressives, who will look at a situation and say, Oh, but I'm not a racist. So, you know, we don't need to talk talk about this, and kind of shutting down the conversation. And I realized that that's something that I had been doing. And then I was exposed through a gentleman that I met on Facebook, in in one of these sort of progressive groups, Facebook groups. I met Marshawn saddar. And he said to me, you know, I asked him if he considered himself a progressive, and he said, I don't think that that's really very well defined. I am an anti racist. And I said, Tell me more about being an anti racist. And he said, Well, it's not just enough to say I'm not racist, you have to stand for something and be specifically anti racist. And so that really inspired me to take a more active role in specifically being anti racist. Not just I am not racist. So I started attending events that were put on by organizations that are in the In the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion activism space, so there's an organization that's newer to Minnesota, called the Center for economic inclusion. And I was actually at the kickoff for their organization, the kickoff event, which was really interesting here in Minnesota. And there's some other organizations that I've been exposed to through the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, that are, you know, doing this kinds of kind of dei activism work.   Michael Hingson  15:33 How is any of that translated being prejudiced about this kind of subject? How is that translated for you in terms of ever dealing with disabilities, because typically, in the diversity world, disabilities are left out, we talk about differences, we talk about race, we talk about gender, and, and other kinds of things. But when it comes to dealing with disabilities, those of us who are involved in that tend not to be included, which really tends to be a problem. So how does how do we deal with that?   Alissa Bartlett  16:05 That's a really good question. And I think that part of it is that oftentimes with a disability, you can't see it. So sometimes you can, right. So you can see race and ethnicity, you can see gender, there are some disabilities that you can see, you know, when we're talking about kind of physical disabilities and limitations, but there are a lot of disabilities that you can't see whether it's a mental disability or chronic pain, or, you know, other types of disabilities. And so I think when you can't see it, it gets harder to measure. And it gets harder to take into account. But there's some, some Well, I mean, I think that your organization, for example, is a really good, really good example of a company that does cater to inclusion around all different types of disabilities and making websites accessible to people with with many different types of disabilities, including disabilities that you can't necessarily see.   Michael Hingson  17:12 Well, yeah, that's true that we deal with a number of disabilities, which may not be visible. But even taking into account the visible disabilities, I have, for example, attended meetings on diversity. And I've actually been asked to speak at meetings on diversity. The problem is that when the conversations are occurring, and they're discussing diversity, and such things, disabilities are still left out. And so we can, we can get granular and talk about specific disabilities, but it really doesn't matter. We are still as a class of people, not included in the conversation pretty much. And that tends to be the problem, the unemployment rate among most persons with disabilities. And I'll deal with physical disabilities, whether it be people in wheelchairs, people who happen to be deaf, people who happen to be blind, the unemployment rate is close to 70%. And it's not that we can't do the work, it's that we're not given the opportunity because people think we can't. And in the whole diversity movement, we get left out. And that's sort of the the frustrating part. How do we get the movement to truly be inclusive? Because you can't be inclusive? If you're going to leave segments of the of the group out?   Alissa Bartlett  18:38 Well, I think you said the key word there, which is inclusion. So it's not just about diversity, which tends to be more associated with skin color, and gender and the sort of visible things that you can see. It's about making yourself and your organization be inclusive of all. And that's why when I was the VP of volunteer engagement for AMA, Minnesota, that's American Marketing Association, non American Medical Association, American Marketing Association, Minnesota chapter, we were doing our strategic plan for 2020. And we were focusing on in being more inclusive, and we've been we purposefully use the word inclusion rather than the word diversity, because it is more broad in its definition. And so how do I personally handle it? So it's not just enough to say I treat everyone the same regardless of their abilities or disabilities or skin color or gender. But what I actually do is I seek out people who are different from me, whether it's different skin color, different age, different under different religious background, different culture or career, or different abled Enos able bodied gnus, I seek out people who are different from me. And I cultivate those relationships and I get to know them and learn about, you know, who they are and where they're from, and their background, and you know, that sort of thing. And so I maintain a very inclusive group of friends and colleagues and acquaintances,   Michael Hingson  20:34 and you actually said something that sort of verifies something that I have thought, which is diversity, in the way I put it has been warped not to include disabilities, you're right, it generally includes or involves people of different races, different genders, and sexual orientations and so on. But it doesn't include disabilities. And the fact is, it should, because we're still talking about differences, but it doesn't. And that's what really gets to be part of the issue. And so I'm seeing a lot of people who talk about inclusive today and inclusion today, but they're not because they're still doing the same thing, it still comes down to not including persons with disabilities. And the reality is if unless we change the language, and I sure hope we don't, inclusion and inclusiveness means inclusion, and you can't leave people out. But the problem is that as a society, we still haven't gotten to the point where we accept persons with so called disabilities as equals. And disability is is an unfortunate term, but it's the best there is we can't, I don't I don't know another term to use differently abled is horrible, which a lot of people have tried to use, but we're not differently abled, we're just as able in the ways that we always have been, we do it differently. But so do a lot of people. Sharp people do things differently than do tall people. But it doesn't make them different or less equal. So it is a it is a challenge. And somehow, we really need to change the conversation to truly be more inclusive right from the outset. And that's the the thing that I think is still lacking a great deal.   22:30 I agree with you. And I think that that's the importance of podcasts like this one where you're talking to a lot of different types of people about these concepts. And alissa   Michael Hingson  22:30 We do talk to all sorts of people, even if they like the Warriors, as opposed to the Lakers, but it's okay. Oh, sports is fun. But but you know, it and I asked the question, because I was curious to, to get your responses. And they they really do sort of validate the thoughts that I and then others have had. And it is also important for people like you who are out in the world and dealing with a lot of these things to find ways to broaden people's eyes about inclusion and diversity. And hopefully that will happen. Well, you said, you've been doing work with the American Marketing Association left to learn more about that.   Alissa Bartlett  23:37 Yeah. So I'm ama Minnesota, has been around for about 40 years. And when the George Floyd murder took place in May of 2020, there was a big uprising here, you know, that was sort of Minnesota was sort of ground zero for this swell of activity. And we among the AMA board, were talking about this a lot. And what we recognized was that if you look at our chapter, it doesn't necessarily reflect the makeup of our profession as a whole. Most of the people who are involved with our chapter are white. And most of the people who are involved with our chapter are women. So we were mostly attracting white women to our events. Interestingly enough, the panelists at our events were mostly white men, despite the fact that our membership was mostly white women. Our panelists were most still mostly white men. And I think that's just a holdover from from previous eras where white men were seen as the sources of information and knowledge. So we recognize that we had a problem Not we weren't reflecting the larger community of marketers that are in Minnesota. And we had some data around that. And, you know, it's it's a much more diverse population than what we had. We had some diversity in terms of industry and experience level and education and that sort of thing, which was great, but we didn't have a good level of diversity when it came to skin color. And we didn't have a good level of, you know, a reflective mix when it came to gender of our panelists and our speakers. So we started paying attention to that. And we started partnering with other organizations in the Twin Cities that could bring, you know, get us in front of a different audience. For example, there's an organization called Black bloggers and creatives of Minnesota. And we partnered with them to put on events and invite their membership and our membership and sort of do some cross mingling there. We also took a look at our panelists and made a specific effort to make the panelists be more diverse. And of course, here again, I'm using that word, diversity. And I'm using that on purpose because we were definitely focused on what the panel's looks like. Because that's one way to do, it's not the only way to do diversity and inclusion. But that's one way to do it. So I'll give you an example. We have a signature event that we do every year, and we call it ad bowl. So we do this event the day after the Super Bowl, and it's all about the ads that were shown in the in the Super Bowl that year. So in 2019, the ad bowl panel was made up of three white men, and one woman woman of color. It was a great panel, I learned a lot, it was fun and funny, but it was definitely skewed. And so in 20, in 2021, when we did add bowl, we were very conscientious to pull in panelists who looked different from each other. And so that year, we had two white males, one white female, and two women of color who were, who were female, obviously, being women. And so we had a much more diverse panel, and the conversation was richer and brought in more different perspectives on the ads. And of course, that year, diversity and inclusion was a really big part of the Superbowl ads given the groundswell of activity through the Black Lives Matter movement. So it was great to have a panel that was really reflective of experts in this field, and people who have lived experiences that are related to the that content. So I was really proud of the work we did around that   Michael Hingson  28:04 was at Bull virtual and 2021. It was   Alissa Bartlett  28:11 so so it's actually been virtual, we haven't yet done an in person one. So my expectation is that next year, it will go back to in person, which is really fun. But the being virtual, we actually use it to our advantage because we were able to get some panelists that didn't live in Minnesota, they're thereby diversifying the panelists even more so. Well,   Michael Hingson  28:36 hopefully in the future. They'll add people with disabilities, you know, what the if depending on who you listen to, whether it be the CDC or other places, the population of persons with disabilities in the United States is anywhere between 21 and 25%. So it's a pretty substantial group. And hopefully, they will also get more involved in the whole marketing world. And that might be a fun thing to add to the mix.   Alissa Bartlett  29:07 I think that's a really excellent point, Michael, I'll have to take it back to them.   Michael Hingson  29:11 I think it'd be a fun thing to explore what happens at the ad bowl?   Alissa Bartlett  29:17 The panelists all present, which which one of their ads, which one of the ads was their favorite? Okay, so we get to watch the ad, and then we talk about it and why was it their favorite? We then do the ads that the ad that they liked the least. And we talked about how it might have missed, missed the mark. And then we talked about any other ads, ads or campaigns that were, you know, significant or stood out in a specific way.   Michael Hingson  29:44 We don't discuss the puppy bowl or the Kitten Bowl.   Alissa Bartlett  29:48 No, I mean, the only way that would come up is if it was tied to some brand was running.   Michael Hingson  29:55 Oh, I understand. That's that's another whole story. Yeah. Well, I think you've talked about this a little bit. But you, you mentioned it as one of the things you wanted to talk about how do you practice diversity and inclusion in your daily life? I think you've touched on that some already.   Alissa Bartlett  30:15 Yeah, I touched on that a little bit. And that is that I really purposefully seek out people who are different from me. And so that's one way that I do it. I have three sons, three boys, and I talk to them about people who are different from them, you know, differently abled, or who look different or who, you know, we I tried to incorporate, at a very basic level, I tried to incorporate toys and activities that are typically meant for girls, and I'm using air quotes here when I say girls, but my kids are really into My Little Pony, for example, which is something that's, I think, typically targeted towards girls. We do a lot of arts and crafts in our house. So I expose them to things that are geared at a more diverse population. And the another thing that I do is I seek out authors that are that are like a diverse set of authors and content creators. When it comes to things like books, and podcasts and articles, just really seeking out sources of information that have a different background from me.   Michael Hingson  31:37 Well, I'm glad that you really do focus on looking at things that are different than you and people who are different than you and that you give your children exposure to that at an early age. If we start that earlier, then they'll grow up thinking about that more than if we don't do it at all. Indeed. And that's kind of important to do. Yeah. So who inspires you?   Alissa Bartlett  32:03 So I smile when you're asked that question, because the person who inspired that question to begin with is a dear friend of mine named Robbia, Koon. And Robbia works and lives in London. When I met her, we were both living in San Diego, we had both gone to UCSD. And then she worked for proflowers, who, as I mentioned, was a client of mine. Robbia has made her way out to London. And she has she works full time. But she also has a wonderful podcast called more than work. And who inspires you right now is one of the questions that she always asks her guests. And I just love it as a question. And so when you asked me for questions, Michael, I was like, you should ask me this one. So Robin inspires me because not only does she work full time, actually in a marketing role, as well as, but she also does this podcast, and she does stand up comedy. And, and to me, those three things are kind of three full time jobs in themselves. And she does all of them. And oh, by the way, she does it with a chronic medical condition. So she's doing all this, along with this chronic condition, which, if you want to learn more about that you should go check her out at more than work pod.com where she will talk a little more about that. But she inspires me right now, another dear friend of mine, who inspires me is Rashida Mahane, and Rashida. I met Rashida through LinkedIn through some mutual LinkedIn connections. And Rashida has a startup in the financial services sector. And my former company improving was running a competition for startups. And so I didn't know Rashida very well, but I knew that she was the CEO of a startup. And so I messaged her one day and I said, Hey, you should apply for this pitch competition that we're doing. And she got back to me immediately and said, Absolutely, I will. And I said, and hey, you know, I don't know that much about you or what you're doing. But I would love to see your pitch, if you would just do it for me. I'm not one of the judges, but I'd love to see it. So we arranged a time for her to do her pitch for me. And it was incredible. And we hit it off right away. And what her what her app is. It's an app that was originally she had it geared towards millennial millennial women. And it's a financial management app to help people not only to improve their financial situation, but also to improve their relationship with money and their behaviors associated with money. So her business sits at the intersection of financial play anything, and psychology. And I just thought that that was a really interesting way to approach it. And one of the pieces of feedback that Rashida got from the code launch people code launch was the name of the competition that she had applied for. One of the pieces of feedback she got was that her her product was not specific enough with who she was targeting, because millennial women are a very large group. And it just didn't feel tailored enough to one population. And so she and I had a lot of conversations around this. And I said, Well, why don't you tailor it towards African American, millennial women? And she said, Well, I don't really know that there's a market for that. I don't know, I think that she was just nervous about doing that. And she thought that that would make her market too small. And she said, I'm just going to design it for any millennial woman, and, you know, hope that African American women get interested in it. And I said, Well, I think you're going about this backwards, I think that you should be designing it specifically for African American women. And other people will be interested in it as well. And I said, design, the app that you needed three years ago, when you had hit rock bottom design, what you needed, then, as a single mother, you know, raising her her daughter, and dealing with financial issues and work issues and all of this stuff, design the app that you needed. And she was like, You're absolutely right. And that really set her off on this course, to develop an app specifically for women of color. And   Alissa Bartlett  36:53 she's really taken off, she's won a bunch more competitions. She applied to code launch again, the next time it ran and got accepted into the program, and got part of her app developed for her for free. And she's just been kicking ass and taking names. And I'm so proud of her. And she's a huge inspiration to me.   Michael Hingson  37:13 That's pretty exciting. It's It's interesting when you can really have an impact on someone and their attitudes and what they do, I think that it's important that we try to broaden people's horizons. And I say it that way, because you broaden her horizons by getting her to focus in on a specific group of people. And I wonder if what you also said is true, which is that others outside of millennial African American women have gotten interested in her app.   Alissa Bartlett  37:49 Yeah, they have. And, you know, one of the things that we talked about, as I said, you know, it's so often that systems in our country are designed for the majority, the, not the majority of the, yeah, the majority group, right. So if that, let's say that, it's, you know, the education system, which is primarily designed for white children, and then the minority groups just have to adapt. And I said, you know, don't black women deserve to have their own financial planning app that's designed specifically for them? I think they deserve that. And, you know, it's not a ton of differences. I'm not saying that African American women are that much different from white women. But there are some there, there are differences there. You know, they're they're dealing with different challenges and different hurdles, and they really deserve to have something that's designed specifically for them. And the thing is, you can't, you know, paint everyone in the same group with the same brushstroke. And there will be other people who are not necessarily an African American woman, but maybe they are a single mom. And, you know, maybe this app would be helpful to them, too. And it will attract other people and other demographic groups, but to really make it for an African American woman.   Michael Hingson  39:15 Well, it's, it's, it's also unfortunate that we have to spend so much time recognizing that everyone is different, rather than recognizing that there's so many similarities in all of us and create products and apps that address all of our issues inside one app. But that is the way the world works today.   Alissa Bartlett  39:39 No, things are very specialized. That things are getting very niche. And that's one of the things that we talk about a lot in marketing, is that you really have to get really granular and targeted with your marketing. And sometimes it'll be like a multi pronged approach where you're going after multiple segments of the population, but a lot of times, you're going to segment out the population on something, you know, whether it's race or gender or household income, or there's far more complicated, attitudinal segmentations that we I used to do at market lab. And you're going to pick one, one population to target because your product is going to appeal mostly to one specific segment of the population. And that's who you want to target with your advertising and stuff like that.   Michael Hingson  40:29 Even though other markets may very well be able to use the product.   Alissa Bartlett  40:33 Yep. But those are secondary. Yeah. Oh, I   Michael Hingson  40:36 understand. They're They're definitely secondary. But the hope is, I would think that they will come along and recognize that maybe this is good for them, too. Absolutely. Yeah, it's just, but you have to start somewhere. And I recognize the value of marketing to a particular group. And seeing how that goes. And maybe over time, we will recognize that, although we have a lot of different groups of people, we, we don't look enough at the fact that we're a lot more alike than we like to think we are. But right now we treat everything in as granular and as different. And that's probably what we have to do, because otherwise we'll leave out so many different people. If that makes sense.   Alissa Bartlett  41:28 Yeah, totally.   Michael Hingson  41:30 So you, since you, since you brought it up and said that I asked you questions. Tell me about the conscious capitalism market or philosophy guide you. And tell me a little bit more about Conscious Capitalism, philosophy.   Alissa Bartlett  41:47 Yeah, I love talking about Conscious Capitalism. Conscious Capitalism is a philosophy that I was exposed to when I was working for improving conscious capitalism is a philosophy and approach to doing business that has four tenants. So the first tenant has higher purpose and saying an organization has to have a higher purpose beyond just making money. Of course, the organization has to be financially solvent. But that can't be an organization's only purpose. The second tenant is a stakeholder orientation. And that is a stakeholder orientation, as opposed to a shareholder orientation. So it's looking at all of your stakeholders, which for sure include your your shareholders, but it also includes your customers, your employees, your vendors, your distributors, your suppliers. It can include your community, it could include the environment, and it can include all these things. And you can make business decisions based on any one of those subgroups of stakeholders, and have that be a viable business decision, as opposed to making all your decisions, just thinking about your shareholders. The third tenant is conscious leadership. And what that is saying is that you are consciously leading the charge within your community, to a more conscious way of doing business. And then the last time it is conscious culture and management, which is saying that, you know, every company has a culture, whether you intend it to have it or not. And so you ought to be intentional about the culture of your company, make it fit with your employees, and also with what you do in the world, to make it be a really great place to work. And so I think about the concepts of conscious capitalism, you can really apply it to any business. And you can even apply it to something like your household.   Michael Hingson  43:52 And I really describe to a large degree, the concept of the entrepreneurial spirit.   Alissa Bartlett  44:02 I think the entrepreneurial spirit is woven in there. But conscious capitalism is something that can be taken on by any sized company at any stage in their, in their trajectory. Some good examples of conscience of companies that embody this philosophy. So Whole Foods is one of them. And in fact, the gentleman who wrote the book is John Mackey, who is the original founder of Whole Foods, and he wrote this book called Conscious Capitalism. Southwest is another really conscientious company that, you know, really thinks about not just their shareholders, but their customers and their employees. Same kind of course, I'm blanking on on all my other conscious capital. I mean, improving my former company is a conscious conscious capitalism company where they say, Yeah, we we want to make money that's that's a given. We do Need to make money but they also do all sorts of things that are not necessarily making them money seeing things that even cost them money, for example, improving hosts, local interest groups, at their, at their offices to do things like monthly meetings of maybe, you know, the, like, quality assurance Professionals Association, or tech masters which is like Toastmasters, but for technology, and they don't just provide the space for people to come and convene, but they actually feed people. So they do pizza in the evenings or, you know, coffee and, and doughnuts in the mornings. And so they put money into the community. Because the those people are stakeholders to the company,   Michael Hingson  45:56 right. And that's kind of why I thought of the whole concept of entrepreneurialism, because it really fits very well with that whole concept. If if somebody truly has that spirit, it's a lot more than just a product, it's a lot more than making money. It is all about trying to work toward a higher purpose of what effect you're going to have and what you do with the company what you do to affect the world.   Alissa Bartlett  46:25 I agree, I think it's a really great way to grow to start a company and grow a company around around a really solid philosophy. And so from that standpoint, I agree that it that it is that it does really embody the entrepreneurial spirit.   Michael Hingson  46:40 Yeah, we, we oftentimes lose that spirit is we are an accompany and it grows and becomes more successful, we get to focus so much on making money doing things for our shareholders. And I've been lectured to by many people on many occasions about how well our overall arching goal is to just do things for our shareholders. Really, I think that people lose a lot of the perspective when they take that position that made them what they were in the first place. So conscious capitalism idea is certainly a significant part of that.   Alissa Bartlett  47:25 Yeah, exactly. So the co author of the book conscious capitalism is a professor named Raj Sisodia. And he does research on companies. And he has hidden and the he's he's done research, which shows that companies that embrace the conscious capitalism philosophy actually do better financially than companies that don't.   Michael Hingson  47:52 So and there you go. It, it proves the point.   Alissa Bartlett  47:58 Yeah. It's not just a feel good philosophy. It's actually a sound business strategy.   Michael Hingson  48:03 And that really is I think, the most important part of the whole concept is that by definition, the proof is that it it not only is a sound business philosophy, it makes for more successful businesses. Absolutely. And oftentimes, people in dealing with business, find that they do better when they recognize that there's more to life than just making an extra dollar.   Alissa Bartlett  48:32 Yeah, that's true.   Michael Hingson  48:34 Well, this has been fun. And I really have enjoyed having you on and I look forward to I'm going to have to go see if I can find the, the the book and read it. And can you give us the name of that again, in the author's   Alissa Bartlett  48:50 conscious capitalism by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia.   Michael Hingson  48:54 There you go. We're gonna have to go find that. Well, this has been absolutely a lot of fun. As I said, if people want to reach out to you and make contact with you, or learn more about what you do, how can they do that?   49:07 The best way to do it is to find me on LinkedIn. I'm Alissa Bartlett. And, yeah, just find me on LinkedIn, connect with me message me. And you know, that's how you and I connected my phone. And it is definitely a great platform.   Michael Hingson  49:22 Oh, LinkedIn offers a lot. And it's been fun to be able to connect with you and to connect with other people. And as I love to say, if I'm not learning from these podcasts, and I'm not doing my job, right, when I travel and speak, I always feel that if I'm not learning more than I get a chance to impart then I'm not doing it right, somewhere along the line, because I think that it's important that we all learn and grow.   Alissa Bartlett  49:46 Yeah, absolutely.   49:48 Well, thank you again, for being here and for being with us and a part of this. I hope that people will reach out and will read the book. I think it sounds like it is something that We should all take to heart. And for all of you, and for all of you listening, please reach out to Alissa. And of course, we'd love to hear from you, you can reach me at Michaelhi@accessibe.com. Or go to our podcast page, Michaelhingson.com/podcast. And give us a five star rating. We appreciate your ratings and your feedback in in all that we do. So it's the way that we get a chance to understand what you want to hear about, and we do our best to make your comments into a real wish that comes true. So thanks very much. And Alissa, I really appreciate again, you being with us today.   Alissa Bartlett  50:43 And thank you so much for having me, Michael.   50:49 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Rob had a nightmare involving the Ravens postgame show and Joe. Justin had a slight mishap at Burlington Coat Factory. Joe went to his nephew's flag football game. Football might be forever ruined for him.  Joe tells an amazing story about his son's swim team career. Justin tells his Dad's favorite joke. Olive's Vet rolls the dice on her own joke. Rob catches everyone up on what he and Koechner are trying to do with The Office Trivia show. Justin pitches a great idea that might help take the trivia show to a new level. And Rob eavesdrops on a conversation about a crime committed. 

It's enough with the Mean Girls October 3rd meme, socks and Burlington Coat Factory cheese fest

This interview is with a high achieving single mom who found a way to make money with her passion for traveling. Lauren Bethea is an HR executive for Burlington Coat Factory and a travel enthusiast who loves helping people live their lives to the fullest.WE INVITE YOU TO OUR ANNUAL SHE MEANS BIZ CONFERENCE 5.0 ON OCT 29TH AT THE FELT FACTORY PHILADELPHIAREGISTER HEREDivaGirl Is A Lifestyle Community That Educates And Empowers Women With Interactive Seminars, Workshops, Events, Conferences And Volunteer Trips Abroad.We provide safe and positive environments for women to connect and support each other for future collaboration. Encouraging women to lead, have fun & feel confident!Please subscribe and leave a review!Come join the tribe: DivaGirl 411 Facebook GroupCheck us out: www.divagirltribe.comFollow us: Diva Girl Tribe IG

Joining us today is Kristin Fitzgerald, the Marketing & Public Relations Manager at Six Flags Great Adventure. Kristin graduated from Seton Hall University with her BA in Communication and Graphic Design and earned her MA in Public Relations and Advertising from Rowan University. At Six Flags, she has served in positions ranging from Communications Manager to Director of Marketing and Entertainment. She has also served as the Director of Corporate Customer Relations at Burlington Coat Factory. Like many of our peers, we love rollercoasters and can’t wait to learn about how theme parks operate behind the scenes!

Charm School season 2 episode 2. The ladies have a bootcamp challenge at the beach. There is much fat shaming and Lacey wears a dress from Burlington Coat Factory.

Listen as the guys are joined by  active military member Peter Goesinyou and discuss the vaccine mandate in the military and also the LAPD shooting inside the Burlington Coat Factory.

This episode we recorded live for the first time with some new features. Today we talk about the Burlington Coat Factory incident with LAPD. Let's watch the video and break it down.

This live show covers the Burlington Coat Factory police shooting in North Hollywood CA that occurred this past Thursday, and accidentally killed a 14-year-old girl, as well, the jut published interview of one of the Kim Potter jurors.LAW OF SELF DEFENSE ADVANCED Class January 8, 2022 VERY LIMITED SEATS! Covers all 50 states!Streamed live online using Zoomhttp://lawofselfdefense.com/advancedNOTE: If you would like a comment or question addressed by Attorney Branca, please provide it through member/supporter access at either http://lawofselfdefense.com/ or at http://lawofselfdefense.locals.com/FREE BOOK! "The Law of Self Defense" Physical book, 200+ pages, we just ask that you cover the S&H: http://lawofselfdefense.com/freebook FREE 5-ELEMENTS INFOGRAPHIC: Totally free infographic explaining the 5-elements of any claim of self-defense, if you don't understand these 5-elements you cannot have any idea what lawful self-defense consists of, PDF download, zero cost: http://lawofselfdefense.com/elements NOTE: Nothing in today's content represents legal advice. If you are in need of legal advice, please retain competent legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. For VIDEO of each portion of today's court proceedings, as well as the text version with links to statutes, jury instructions, court decisions, here: Text version of this content:(Coming soon.)

A 14-year-old accidentally shot and killed while police hunt down a suspect inside a SoCal Burlington Coat Factory store.  Now the blame game begins with many pointing fingers at the Police Officer who fired the shot. What about the suspect?  Why is no one discussing him? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Los Angeles Police Department releases new details about an OIS that took place on December 23rd, 2021 at a Burlington Coat Factory in California. 

Wayne Resnick sits in for Bill Handel and is joined by KFI News Director Chris Little, filling in for Jennifer Jones Lee. The two discuss news topics that include: The CDC has cut the COVID isolation period from 10 days to 5 as it recommends a shorter quarantine, the LAPD has released footage of the fatal police shooting involving a 14-year-old teen bystander at a Burlington Coat Factory, and a suspect has been charged in a fatal shooting of a man who confronted him during an alleged car theft in Covina.

Wayne Resnick fills in for Bill Handel. The LAPD's tactics are being scrutinized after a 14-year-old girl was struck with a stray bullet in a Burlington Coat Factory after police opened fire on a dangerous suspect. The Donner Party survivors have led strange, sad, and influential lives. And there are some surprising brain benefits that accompany exercising with others.

EP283 - Year End Review  It's our final show of 2021! We recap the US Dept of Commerce November Advanced Retail Sales Data. We do a deep dive into the retail industries growth from 2019 through November 2021. In those 23 months, the retail industry grew 22%, historically fast growth. There were clear winners and losers. If you want to follow along on with all the data, here is a visual recap of retail growth 2020-2021. (PDF Download). We also highlight the six most important trends of 2021. Amazon fulfillment capacity growth (Amazon and Walmart become shipping companies) Social Media becomes the discovery channel for e-commerce (led by live-streaming) Ultrafast delivery services Amazon invents and starts to scale a grocery store (Amazon Fresh) with just walk out technology Retail Media Networks explode, led by Amazon's $30B in ad sales. Retailers now compete with social media networks for eyeballs Apparel has shifted from designer led to consumer led, as evidenced by the meteoric rise of Shein We're so very grateful to our audience, both for the time you have shared with us, and for generous opinions, feedback, and knowledge that many of you have shared. We wish you all the very best holidays and New Years, and look forward to seeing you in 2022! Episode 283 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, December 21st, 2021 http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 283 being recorded on Tuesday sept December twenty first twenty Twenty-One I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason how are the holidays treating you so far. Jason: [0:46] They are treating me really well it's been super interesting what's going on in our industry and getting ready to take the family to California to see my mom and brother. Scot: [0:59] Very fun California versus Chicago seems like a smart smart choice this time. Jason: [1:04] Yes early and my relationship with my wife we agreed that we would visit her Michigan in-laws and Thanksgiving and my California relatives in December seems weather prudent if nothing else. Scot: [1:16] Yeah smart I like your like you're negotiating strategies so we are recording this here live on December 21st so we are in the very last tail end of holiday 21 and Jason you had some some interesting data that you had parse through that I thought we could start with it's going to be largely kind of the November data but it's kind of the best data we have, until we get into January and see how the holiday played out and then we'll do a quick checkpoint on what you're hearing from clients and then I think both of us wanted to kind of share our big stories for retail and e-commerce for 2021 so why don't you kick us off with some data. Jason: [1:57] That sounds amazing so yeah so the data we are talking about is the US Department of Commerce data we get a an update every month so you know last week we got the, the update that includes November and in general November sales were up sixteen percent from November of twenty twenty so I always coach people that we should look at year-over-year not month over month so pretty healthy growth in 2021 from 2020 if you look at year-to-date so January through November we are up about 18% from 2020 and if you look at e-commerce we were up about 12 percent from November of 2020 so I you know I always put this data out on social media and I got a ton of, interesting responses this year on that data everyone's like hey Jason why are you comparing to November of 2020 like we're in the middle of the pandemic everything was all topsy-turvy like it's like comparing, pandemic 2021 numbers to pain demick 2020 numbers isn't very helpful to me because everything is so confusing. [3:13] And so I kind of took that to heart like you know it is the best kind of comparison we have about how we're doing but I said oh you know the more interesting comparison is maybe we take. One step back and we compare the. The the last two years of data to two years ago so we kind of compare how much growth we've had during the pandemic with what girls look like before the pandemic and I hadn't hadn't really done that in a while and what I found was interesting and in a few cases it surprise me. Scot: [3:46] I feel like we should create a new word for this I'll work on it in the vein of a ship again yeah that's just boring I don't know. Jason: [3:54] Yeah yeah de or. Yeah every CEO in America has learned to say you're over two years ago by the way and for it's super funny for non-gaap metrics in the and in the 10-qs they. Like it's they kept they completely cherry-pick like if the number is good they take versus last year and if it's bad they take versus two years ago. Scot: [4:18] Yeah yeah that's the nice thing you need everything every number needs to be up into the right. Jason: [4:23] My takeaway there is you CEOs are oily. Scot: [4:25] We know we're strategic. Jason: [4:29] Got it potato potahto. Scot: [4:31] Cool what did this year over your year over year over last year review. Jason: [4:37] Yeah so if we say hey from how much has retailgeek grown in 2020 and 2021 as a two-year stack it has grown 22 percent, so you know people talk about like all the struggles and challenges we had during the pandemic but if I see if I got in a time machine and no pandemic just told every retail CEO how would you feel about growing 22% over the next two years, the vast majority of CEOs would have jumped at that and then if you said and our life is going to be totally disrupted by this pandemic. [5:14] I think every retail CEO in America would have said I'd be thrilled to get through the next two years with 22 percent growth so that was interesting and then I said I wonder how that compares historically so I got in the hot tub time machine and I pulled all the data from 1990 through today and I restated every year as its growth versus the previous two years to kind of come up with this standard metric to compare against the 22 percent and 22% is unprecedentedly high it's by far the biggest two-year growth we've had since 1990 there's only a few years that that just tickled 15% so I can 2000 we hit 15 percent and in 1994 we hit 15% but like, most of the. The this last decade we were kind of tickling in the kind of six to eight percent growth so 22 percent growth. On average for the whole retail industry is a huge win and unprecedentedly more growth than we would traditionally get does that surprise you at all. Scot: [6:26] It doesn't sort of make sure I understand it's all retail so it's offline and online in Aggregate and then you can't just divide it by 2 right because there's compounding in there so it's not really two years of 11 it's probably like I don't know 12 in an 8 or something. Jason: [6:41] Yes so you are correct now and. That 20 yes and all of this data it does include compounding the the compounding is an interesting point which will come up in a another piece of data in in just a minute but yeah so this is all like literally looking at the. Aggregate sales for 2019 and the aggregate sales for 2021 and saying how much bigger was 2021 than 2019. Scot: [7:08] Yeah did you run a kegger so in MBA school they would say well you can actually unpack the compounding by look at the compounded annual growth rate. Jason: [7:17] Yes yes I am familiar with the math I did not. Scot: [7:21] Okay it was two years it's not going to be that substantial yeah repeat. Jason: [7:24] No that's the yeah it's right typically like with like a five-year Horizon it makes a lot more sense but yeah it would have been interesting but it just I had to your data so I was just trying to come up with an Apples to Apples. Scot: [7:36] Not feels feels like a wind. Jason: [7:38] Yeah so then I said alright well that's interesting on average retail is a huge win. [7:44] Very obviously there are winners and losers so I said alright well let's look at all the categories that the US Department of Commerce gives us. Based on that 2-year stack and there were you know and who was at the industry average who wildly outperformed the industry average and who underperformed the industry average and there are some things that made total sense to me and we're not surprising and then there were some pretty big surprises in there so, the the category that out of the US Department of Commerce data that grew the fastest was, non store sales which is kind of our e-commerce proxy right and it grew 39 percent so almost twice as fast its total retail that's pretty intuitive you know again you're hearing a lot of. E-commerce growth is slowing. Wagon November as more people went back to stores you know compared to this like you know pandemic impacted 20/20 but when you look at onto your stack, e-commerce is still the fastest growing part of retail at group 39% from 2019 and that certainly didn't surprise me the next two categories sporting goods and building materials, also really didn't surprise me because we kind of talked about them being, the big pandemic winners that like you know people then go to the gym so they bought stuff from Dick's Sporting Goods people didn't go on vacation so they built a new patio with materials from Home Depot and so kind of all the that Services Revenue. [9:14] Shifted into retail and that gave sporting goods and building materials a big a big kiss. Motor Vehicles which at one point people were saying like oh my God that's going to be a horrible category in the pandemic Motor Vehicles actually outperformed the industry average so they grew at 24 percent versus 22 percent for total retail. And then here's where we start getting surprises. Slightly below the industry average was furniture and Home Furnishing so that grew at 21 percent versus the industry average of 22 and if you just asked me to bet I would have said in the same way that building materials and Home Improvement stores. Got extra spending from the pandemic I would have expected furniture stores to get extra spending from the pandemic as well and so it surprised me that they were only at the industry average and the only my only hypothesis is. Did they have more disruptions from supply chain like why. Was it just harder for them to scale up to make more sofas to meet the increased demand and so they, they grew healthy but they didn't grow as healthy as they might have because they they couldn't double their us Workforce to build more couches. Scot: [10:23] The feels right the furniture industry has been here in North Carolina that's our primary one and they're just destroyed by the supply chain they can't there was a series of events that couldn't get phone because of the fire and awesome remember that that seems like a year ago but it actually wasn't go to the summer and then with this quote-unquote Supply pain they haven't been able to get the other inputs like anything fabric while that stuff made in China and shipped over here and sitting on a boat somewhere. Jason: [10:50] Yeah and I feel like it's a double whammy for them because it's harder than ever to make stuff but there's actually they could sell more than ever before if they could make it so it's like, it almost feels worse than knowing there's demand that you can't meet. Scot: [11:01] Yeah it's painful. Jason: [11:03] Yeah so then general merchandise grew at 16 percent versus of retail 22 percent and then the one that surprised me most that I talk about a lot is grocery grew at 16 percent versus the industry average of 22 percent and I would have said man a ton of spending shifted from restaurants to grocery stores they were another pandemic winner and so I'll be honest I don't have a perfect hypothesis for why. Again sixteen percent is Healthy Growth and by historical standards it's better than any two-year period since 1990 so I don't want to say oh you know they had a rough time they had a good time but surprising that they were below the industry average to me a little bit. You have any great Insight that I didn't think of on why that would be. Scot: [11:52] I don't maybe it's like a mix thing underneath the hood like the e-commerce grew so much doesn't it like well I'll be in this category are rules so if. Jason: [12:02] Imperfect yes so you are right like one of the wrinkles in all of this is. The way the US Department of Commerce treats e-commerce as another category which is unfortunate right because you know when someone shifts from buying a exercise bike in a Dick Sporting Good to buying a dick exercise bike from Dick's Sporting Goods.com. The sale leaves the sporting good category in enters the non-store category and so that's. That's not really Apples to Apples and then of course this is all done with surveys that are in perfectly filled out by human beings and so how different retailers respond to that survey is also inconsistent so you got it. This data is super helpful directionally but you definitely don't want to get too wrapped around the axle of the minutiae of the data because it's just an imperfect methodology. [12:52] And so then the the categories they did the worst, do make sense with one outlier for a couple hours for me so gasoline only grew at 14%, you know again make sense to me that they you know underperformed when people aren't commuting to work surprising 14% sales are still pretty good growth clothing is near the bottom at 12% growth so again clothing over the last two years did not shrink they still grew at 12% which might have been their average rate of growth I should do that waiters pulled just the category growth over the last 30 years. But compared all these other categories obviously closing was was poor and the Very lowest category is restaurants and bars which still grew six percent so that all makes sense but then there were two two categories in the cellar that I would have expected to do better health and personal care grew at 11% and Electronics and Appliances grew at seven percent so those are both pretty far under the industry average and you know those are two categories. They had some complication they had pros and cons you know within that category but by and large I guess I was surprised to see them so well. Scot: [14:06] Yet Health and Beauty one because Aaron was zooming like the makeup sales shot way up so it's got to be a you know it was e-commerce. Jason: [14:15] Lipstick sales actually went way down because of the Mask but mascara and skincare went way up it's so funny bye. Um so, then I just did one other sanity check so you know people like a couple people a couple of Industry analysts even like responded to my data and said yeah just don't believe the numbers and I'm like just some understanding you you're saying you don't believe the US Department of Commerce numbers not like I didn't make any of these numbers upright bike. [14:45] And and the US Department of Commerce data is imperfect I would argue it's. The best we have access to and it's it's a bunch of you know PhD in statistics that have you know the force of law to you know to enforce compliance with their survey so I it's better than any other survey out there for whatever that's worth but so I thought how can I do a chance sanity check on this data and I'm like oh all the public retailers are required to report their growth every quarter so we could try to create a year over two year growth for all of these public retailers and compare it to the industry data and some of these public retailers are in a particular category so you can you know pretty safely assume all their sales are in that category so you could kind of use that as a sanity check so I pulled I don't know I guess it's about 25 companies and I converted their quarterly growth into a two-year stack and here I will confess I took a shortcut and if there's any mathematicians that want to help me solve this problem I will toy do it these. Draws numbers are not compounded growth so the problem is we don't have annual growth rates from the Retailer's we have quarterly growth rate so basically you have to. Aggregate for quarters of growth and then. [16:11] Calculate it over two years and so I took a lazy shortcut and I just added their. 20 growth to their 2021 growth so we have basically seven quarters of growth for most of these retailers and it's it's what they call a two-year stack which means growth from 2019 plus 2020 and while the math is not right there by the way right because of. Like the compounding problem of your 2020 growth include your you know growth over 2019. This is how most retailers reported in their earnings so when they talk about to your growth for these non-gaap measures where they try to put themselves in the best light and they report their two year growth they're almost never talking about a compounded number like if you read the footnote. They're they're adding the growth from those two years so this is how they're doing the math in most cases for whatever that's worth but so that's way more precursor than we need the retailer that grew the public retailer the grew the most over the last two years total shocker to me I would not have expected in a million years is Burlington Coat Factory. That Drew 85% and to put that in perspective, they sell apparel which did not do very well in the pandemic and they turned off their website their e-commerce site the month before the pandemic. So they didn't sell any a long line. Scot: [17:34] They're not really opening a lot of stores either. Jason: [17:36] No I mean they may have opened a couple stores over the whole two years but like this is mostly comp sales growth so it actually kind of, factors out new store. Scot: [17:46] Okay so it's cops okay. Jason: [17:47] Yeah this is these numbers that ye are based on currency adjusted comp sales just in the u.s. wherever possible so so Burlington's a total outliner congratulations to them surprising to me Amazon is was the second fastest grower and all public retail at 61 percent over two years which. Doesn't surprise me that super impressive but you'd expect to see them near the top of this list then you see Dick's Sporting Goods at 57 percent and again, like from from the industry data Sporting Goods was the second fastest growing category behind e-commerce so Amazon as a proxy for e-commerce and dicks is approximately for sporting goods makes total sense but then things start getting interesting the next fastest grower was Ulta which is personal care at 36 percent so they grew much better than did the. The personal care category now they're less than half the personal care category the slightly bigger version of them would be Sephora but Sephora is actually owned. Buy a house of Brands and so it's harder to get their data. [19:01] Bed Bath & Beyond group 35% which is impressive Target group 34 percent, Home Depot which again was in one of these these outperforming categories grew 33% was group 28% by comparison Best Buy grew 29% in this it doesn't surprise me the best bike route 29 percent but this is. Makes that the fact that Electronics was one of the slowest growing categories at 7% make even less percent make even less sense I guess it's it's hard to imagine how. Electronics only grew seven percent over the last two years when you know everyone bought all this extra equipment for homeschooling and home entertainment and then with Best Buy growing 29 percent it's even harder to imagine. Scot: [19:53] Yeah maybe in a perfect world you could then split like something like that into store non-store store / e-commerce and maybe that would tell the story. Jason: [20:00] Yeah yeah again that's like one of the few the, my few answers to to a number of these anomalies and then I know this is like all these numbers in a podcast sock but like then you start getting into like Abercrombie & Fitch 28% Costco 26 percent, Cole's Nordstrom's Walmart grew at 21% which again for you know a huge company, the fortune one company to grow at the industry average is pretty good Nike grew at 20%. T.j. Maxx at 15% and the the bottom three. A surprise into not surprises so the second worse and third two words were Dollar Tree in Dollar General at 10% growth which is kind of surprising. You know consumers were kind of flush with cash with all the extra economic stimulus they weren't really slowing down their spending and so like you know maybe it wasn't a great season for the value shoppers but a lot of the news was about how these dollar stores were opening tons of stores and we're really thriving so interesting that they both only Drew. 10% and then the the worst performing public company on this was Macy's which grew six percent over the two years not totally surprising. Scot: [21:18] Isn't that the one that Prophet G said was going to crush. Jason: [21:24] Be there be there the future of retailers Macy's not Amazon yeah this chart unfortunately yeah contradicts that prediction so we'll have to wait and see are you Scott Galloway fans you just hang on hang on to your stick to your guns. Scot: [21:38] Good luck with that. Jason: [21:41] Yeah so that's my the rabbit hole that the stupid November numbers took me down so as you can imagine none of my clients got any deliverables in November. Scot: [21:52] When people tell you they don't believe the data what are they reacting to. Jason: [21:57] I think there's a couple categories there are people that are like hey it's the the month-over-month is interesting but like. Who cares right because these are all anomalous months and that's why I went for this two-year stack and and so. My point was I think like when people are saying hey I don't I don't believe the data I actually don't think they meant they don't believe that this is the data that the US Department of Commerce reported I think they're both saying in some cases, I don't think the US Department of Commerce can count very well and what they mostly hang their hat on is is the non store sales not being right and that's fair right like when someone at Best Buy fills out a survey the US Department of Commerce would like them to put their e-commerce sales in one box and their store sales in another box. [22:47] And do they do that I don't know right and does every retailer do that. Properly and consistently I can tell you that the person assigned to fill out the surveys is generally not the most senior accountant at the it's usually not the CFO. Um so so that is imperfect and then what I think they're saying more is. Maybe don't make all your future plans based on like this snapshot of the world because you know we are looking at a unique set of circumstances that resulted in this data right so if you mistakenly thought my takeaway was retail is better than ever and you know everybody should double down because you know retailers is the most thriving industry in the world 22 percent growth is amazing and it's going to continue forever. [23:36] Yeah no that's not what I'm saying I'm just saying that like it's interesting there were positive and negative impacts on all these businesses as a result of the pandemic but on the aggregate. The impact was disproportionately positive and I don't think that that is sustainable right like I you know I think we will hope to drop down to the regular the sort of pre-pandemic growth levels and potentially. We pulled some growth forward and we might even see some more lean years because we you know absorb so much growth this time. Scot: [24:10] This a long way of you saying you now agree with the the Goldman Sachs chart that showed five years of acceleration. Jason: [24:15] No no I think that still is pretty clear and they were primarily talking about e-commerce which definitely didn't happen. Scot: [24:23] Checking. Jason: [24:25] So that's my my deep dive into data and if there's there can't be anything more fun than listening to a podcast about a bunch of dudes being a bunch of numbers so I will I'll do two things I'll try to put some of this data in the show notes but what I'll do is I'll put a link in the show notes to download some charts with this data in it. Scot: [24:46] Very cool I actually like you spewing data so maybe I'm just an audience of one. Jason: [24:53] You may be in a liar. Scot: [24:56] So what are you seeing so that kind of gets us through November what are you seeing here in December I poked around on the usual spots for the Adobe and the sales force and a couple others and it's really weird they've been kind of quiet since since kind of the Cyber week what what are you hearing from your clients. Jason: [25:17] Yeah so I don't know like there's not good data that's already reporting December sales for holiday but so anecdotally talking to a bunch of clients and talking to some of these companies that do have internal data. December is looking like a good month right and so the. My kind of aggregate estimate is holiday for 2021 is going to end up being about. Nine percent bigger than holiday 2020 and again you say well as nine percent good or bad by historical standards it's pretty darn good most most years we get about a holiday grows less than the rest of the year because there's so much extra volume in it so most years we get about five percent growth in holiday in 2019 we got four percent growth 9% is a big number and last year was a pretty big growth year and so. Um you know also around nine percent so nine percent on top of 9% is a. Pretty big deal I have seen some estimates that think it'll grow even more than nine percent this year to put that in perspective the last time before last year there grew nine percent would have been like 1999 so so not only do we have great growth over two years we do have great holiday growth one huge caveat. [26:43] The trend up until about a week ago was, that more people were returning to the store store traffic was going up we were seeing kind of pre-pandemic shopping behaviors and e-commerce was still a big deal bigger than ever before but the rate of growth was swelling because, there was so much pent-up demand and go to stores lots of people were planning on getting together with their family like there was a funny Walmart stat about you know how much bigger the turkeys were that got sold this year than last year because people were, we're entertaining a lot more so, unfortunately in kind of real-time chats with most of my clients in the last week we have seen foot traffic to stores dramatically curtail and it feels like. We're very quickly getting a lot of negative Media news around and I say media but I guess it's based on the data about Omicron and the hypothesis is there either, Omicron has people scared and so they're not going to stores or a second hypothesis is everyone desperately wants to have their family gathering so they're being extra cautious leading up to Christmas but in either case, we're seeing this last-minute pivot to e-commerce and that has some impacts like the shipping companies that actually been doing. [28:04] Much better job this year than last year on keeping up with ship again in but if suddenly everyone you know runs towards e-commerce these last two weeks that could really put. [28:15] Shipping in Jeopardy in a in a really vulnerable time when they have a lot of Labor challenges so yeah I don't know it's kind of a Debbie Downer bit of news in this whole thing. Scot: [28:26] Yeah yeah I'm a crime that has a it's going to put next year kind of up into a question mark of what happens is and then. The thing that's really frustrating trying to operate a business during this time frame is the bookmarks of good and bad are so wide that. Dirty you have no idea but you drive a truck through and right there 180 degrees so you read one new source it's like oh it's super mild and it's almost going to act like its own vaccine then you see another source and it's like we're all gonna die. Somewhere hopefully we're somewhere in the middle there. Jason: [28:58] Amen Ya Know It's Tricky yeah and kind of evaluating all these data sources that's like the new the new societal challenge right. Scot: [29:09] It really is. Jason: [29:12] So I'm wondering so that's that's kind of my holiday snapshot some good news and some bad news in there I wanted to take a couple minutes on this podcast because I think this is going to be our last show of the year to kind of zoom out from the minutiae and just kind of think about the year in totality and kind of, don't know you know highlight what we think are the big things that happened in our industry this year that might impact us going forward how do you feel about that. Scot: [29:39] Let's do it you want to go first. Jason: [29:41] I mostly wanted you to go first because I thought I would surprise you and make you get bet answers while I thought about it. Scot: [29:48] Okay I'll go first so so I'm going to try to limit it to three because we. Yeah we could go on for for a long time here so I think the highlights of this year for me, it would be a Jason and Scot show if we didn't think a little bit about Amazon the. Build out of Amazon's shipping infrastructure and I feel like we say this every year but it's accelerating and there's some really good data we want to have a guest on that's publishing some data on this just Amazon has built more capacity in the last two years than they had in the last 10 so they've used the pandemic as a you know the response to it and they've gotten kind of cover I guess you could say is to really. 10x down on fulfillment infrastructure where where you get the most feeling of that is that the last mile which is this DS p– program that they've just really scaled up massively. This touches my my day job because it's Biffy we'd service a lot of these folks and they're just they're everywhere and, you know it used to be they would kind of work out a fulfillment systems then they built these fulfillment centers now they've got these see the last word of station what are they call them. [31:02] Delivery stations that have a whole new nomenclature where they now are have these forward-deployed areas where the dsps are almost housed and Aggregates you'll go to these places and it's pretty well that I've seen several of them now and they'll be like 20 dsps operating out of there these little micro businesses and you know just. [31:22] Prime Vans as far as I can see. Where is the stat that I think is kind of the most interesting is the Amazon did disclose that they plan to ship more than then FedEx this year and then I think they said in the next couple of years they'll exceed the USPS as far as package delivery it doesn't surprise me just given the scale that they are throwing at this thing. For example you can't buy a van today because the Amazon is just pretty ordered all the vans so it's pretty fascinating the scale they've done there. The thing that in our will do our annual predictions but I've been annually predicting that they would compete more directly with FedEx and UPS by offering just package delivery to anybody I just feels like we're a lot closer to that but I say that every year so we'll see, the other surprise for me is the explosion of this 15-minute grocery delivery world the most people have probably their first experience this or the first company heard was go puff and it wasn't really a 15-minute thing it was just kind of faster it was almost hours then you had instacart really scale up and then what's happened is the service level on these things it's got lower to the point where they're all trying to get you something in 15 minutes. It's a smaller number of skus than you would get with like Amazon's 300 million skus available so it's typically going to be. [32:43] You know you probably have a cool word for it but it's like snacks and oh my gosh I'm out of a soda I need or ice cream things that you kind of have an urgent hankering for and are willing to pay to scratch that itch a little bit more. On the shipping and handling fees and those kinds of things these are kinds of things when I talk to people they're like yeah that little the economics will never work in the be no one will ever use it and then everyone's always surprised because you can never underestimate the convenience or any consumer that when you give them the choice to do something with convenience they will, they will do it and they will order things you would never have thought about. I remember when Amazon rolled out Prime now they were shocked that the toilet paper and personal products were such a high considered item and it's just you know. People people don't plan ahead and they run out of stuff and they want it right then and there willing to pay extra for it so that one's pretty interesting and you track this probably even better I do Amazon's going after this one and then there's like, 10 startups in there that are have all raised, billions of dollars go puff just announcer one and a half billion dollar extension of their last round by layering on some debt so there's one called like gorillas or gorillas and. [33:55] Tons of these things out there but Amazon scaling it up too so it's gonna be interesting to see if any of these guys can make Headway against Amazon or Famas on will just crush them. [34:05] And then the last one is live-streaming this one sputtering in the US, every data point outside the US indicates it's a thing and I do think this one's going to translate from I've seen it I've seen data that shows that as a has expanded out of China and that's kind of where maybe a year ago we were talking about it largely on Alibaba platform. But now I think it's there's European startups I'm starting to see some categories in the US where this is interesting I followed the collectible category and there's a couple of the hot companies are they do these live streams where they will do. Unboxings so they will they will buy a pack of cards from like the 80s and then they will open them live and and see what's in there and and you know, it's kind of riveting if you're if you're into that and you're like I wonder you know there's a one in 100 chance that this has a Michael Jordan rookie card or something and they pull that the column poles that can be fascinating so there's a lot of. Kind of very specific category activity going there that I think I think a lot of us thought okay Amazon's and do this Amazon is tried and it's been pretty terrible but I think it's going to come from these really niche of Articles at first and they're going to figure it out and then you'll see it get more more momentum up into the broader retailers so those are those are my three. Jason: [35:27] Wow those are three good ones I feel like you stole my three I'm just kidding um no but I totally agree with all those I do think like we've actually seen Amazon launch some. Selling of shipping services and I've seen Stan said they're going to deliver 90% of their own packages this holiday so like I think that definitely is a thing even Walmart is now, selling shipping services to other people including Home Depot so that's totally interesting Trend hundred percent agree on the live streaming like I kind of call it the D bundling of shopping and you know we have all these e-commerce sites that are good at buying things but we're not very good at product Discovery and it seems like social and video or where a lot of the, the new product discoveries coming from and then that that ultra-fast delivery for filling orders to give you all the words you are asking about the that that's a huge thing and if you think about you know how much retailers are struggling with with grocery profitability like it's a double whammy that wow they're trying to figure out how to solve for profitability the consumers moving to this even you know inherently less profitable order so it's going to be that that's going to be an interesting disruption of the industry so if I were to add 3 to that. I do think just the whole pandemic. [36:41] Acceleration of great digital grocery like is when I talk about a lot and I still think that that is a huge thing like all those predictions about how much the pandemic was accelerating e-commerce for probably wrong but grocery delivery Ecommerce probably did get accelerated five years and to me maybe you know what will ultimately end up being one of the most important things that happened during the pandemic is Amazon invented a new grocery store right this Amazon Fresh concept and it's starting to scale there's more than 30 of them now they have just walk out technology in them which I would have bet against them having this quickly and there are there are lots of investigative journalists that have found. Some interesting real estate footprints that would imply that it's going to scale their that there's a business plan footing out here that had like 300 of these in the UK which is a small island um I think we could look back five years from now and see Amazon is a very meaningful brick-and-mortar grocer and and I think 20:21 is the year it it happened without us totally acknowledging it so I think Jay W groceries an interesting Evolution one that I end up talking about a lot with my clients also driven by Amazon is retail media networks right so you know Amazon, is that a run right now of about 30 billion dollars in ads it's probably the most profitable business Amazon has I think this this. [38:08] Battle for eyeballs between retailers and traditional digital platforms is super interesting and I think you know you set the layer who is. One of the the. The key guys at Amazon media like we had him on the show when he moved to Fresh Direct and he's now running Walmart Connect Four for Walmart so you're seeing the Retailer's hire these like credible media sales people and I think that's a. [38:37] A going forward a significant part of every retailers plan is how to be their own media Network how to get eyeballs and how to monetize those eyeballs and that's a new new skill for a retailer so I think that's a big deal and then the last one I'm gonna throw out, is one that I am surprised doesn't get talked about more but it's the apparel retailer she in and I think they are super interesting they've had phenomenal success they're probably globally the largest apparel reseller on the planet right now and their their annual revenues are more than than H&M and Zara combined so so remarkable. [39:18] Story of fast acceleration but the bigger story here is, to me Sheehan is very representative of the democratization of apparel that like for the longest time we expected Mickey Drexler or Versace or Yeezy to tell us like what was cool to wear and then we waited until we can buy those clothes and we bought them and I just I think that model is totally dead now I think the apparel that sells best the stuff that she and sells the stuff that target cells the stuff that Stitch fix cells is frankly based on customer data it's watching customers finding out what they like and then making it really fast and so Sheehan isn't isn't fashion driven by a stylist It's Fashion driven by Tick-Tock right and an Instagram and I think that's a, a lot of apparel companies haven't gotten the memo yet that the consumer is now squarely in charge of these fashion trends. Scot: [40:18] Yeah saw an article about these guys were this this one lady she did this Argyle Sweater outfit and. It was on Instagram it got some viral love they took that and it created a hole the outfit they had copied it or I guess fast fashion and I don't know how the how the IP Works in this world but they had replicated it and they I think they even used her picture which I think was with articles about that she didn't really you know, realize that that effectively shows open sourcing this thing to the world and then it became a top seller for them like in 60 days it was insane how fast that they identified the trend and get the. The product out there it was like you know NASCAR fashion or something. Jason: [41:03] Yeah it's crazy if you think about like the fashion traditionally worked like. Dudes would show up in Paris at the Fashion Show and show these cool Styles and then everyone would steal those Styles and send them an effector he's and two years later those fact those Fashions would be available at Neiman Marcus. Two years later and in so the genius of Gap was that they got those Fashions to the mall, 18 months later instead of two years later and the the disruption of H&M and Zara was that they got them to the mall six months later instead of 18 months later right. She and sees that woman in the crop-top Argyle Sweater and they have they have that fashion available in a week and here's what super interesting they don't make a million of them and hope they sell which is what all those other retailers had to do, they make 12 of them and if those 12 sell in 8 seconds versus 20 seconds then they make thousands of them. Right and so it's really data-driven real-time a/b testing on apparel trans at a speed that that these kind of traditional apparel Brands can't even imagine. Scot: [42:13] That's because they have the factory right there that they're able to do that or like to have some. Jason: [42:17] Yeah and they. In Shane's case they don't own the factories they have a net like that it's a gig worker economy for factories right like so in the same way that boober recruits a bunch of Uber drivers she and recruits a bunch of factories that they then go to and say hey we've got some some ideas for some new models and find one of those factories that accepts the order and makes the the stuff and so in sometimes there's our Factory driven ideas sometimes there she and driven ideas but but yeah that's that's the model and you know there is a Dark Side to this I got you know a lot of its there's a lot of questions about the labor standards and practices at a bunch of these factories and of course there's. You know a lot of the stuff that gets bought on Shion is super cheap and gets worn once and so it's a ecological disaster I would argue the industry it's disrupting is also. Kind of a you know it has a lot of dark sides and and is not very sustainable so I like I'm not sure she and improves on on any of those problems but from a pure consumer demand standpoint, I don't think we're ever going back to you know these like anointed tastemakers that like decide what we're all going to wear for the next year. Scot: [43:32] Yet clearly clearly that model is sailed having. Jason: [43:36] Indeed well listen Scott I know we both have to run but that is probably a great place to wrap up our final show of 20:21 I need to take some downtime not to see my family or anything like that but in early January we always like to record the forecasts show and hit traditionally you crush me and so I feel like I need to spend a lot more time thinking about my forecast before the forecast show comes up. Scot: [44:07] Yeah challenge accepted I will also be thinking about this in a background processes I'm enjoying the holiday I think this is a good time to thank our listeners you know we've you know we've seen our listenership grow pretty steadily over the years and we really appreciate everyone giving us time to your day to talk about the topics we talk about and we get a lot of great feedback and really engaged set of listeners and we really appreciate you listening and if you want to share your appreciation one of the ways you can do that is through a five star rating so fire up your favorite podcast listening technology and if you would leave us a five starters we that would be the perfect holiday gift for us. Jason: [44:47] Yeah that's exact five stars is exactly my size to Scott. Scot: [44:50] How about that. Jason: [44:53] Awesome well most of can't appreciate enough the listeners for spending this time with us every week this is a lot of fun for us to do and I learned so much from the the chats I have with folks after they listen to the podcast so I'm that is one of the things I'm super grateful for. Scot: [45:10] Everyone have a great holiday Jason you how enjoy your trip to California. Jason: [45:14] Thank you you have a wonderful holiday as well and until next time happy commercing!  

A big part of branding is what we call things. We're the first to admit that names are important. Whether you're deciding what to call your brand, your product, or your category, there's a lot that goes into a name. On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we talk about everything that does (and sometimes doesn't) go into names. Through the lens of the recent rebrand by SurveyMonkey, transitioning into their umbrella company Momentive, as well as companies like Dunkin' Donuts, Burlington Coat Factory, and more, we talk about how and why brands change their names. What's the reason? What's the value? What's the risk? When and why does it work? And when and why does it sometimes... not... Forbes article: SurveyMonkey Rebrands As Momentive To Fuel Its Growing Enterprise Business About DRMG: SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn't about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It's about the category you design and the story you tell. DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market. The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They're organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win. Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG. Learn more at: drmg.co

Workplace drama!  Join Benton & Anna as they discuss the dangers of having coworkers.  First, Anna gives a rundown on workplace violence why coworkers may turn on each other, and Benton relays the murder of Lorraine Faison in the break room of a Burlington Coat Factory.  Then, Anna tells the tale of Patrick Sherrill, who is responsible for the phrase, "going postal".  Finally, the two watch a classic case of Forensic Files, profiling the stalking of an eastern Pennsylvania schoolteacher, Joanne Chambers.Our TV doc this week is Season 2: Episode 9 of Forensic Files, "Sealed With a Kiss".

Pour of The Pod: NPBC5 TBH Hazy Triple IPA - North Park Beer Company What do you guys think about these YouTube/Celebrity beers? The started with tequila now they're in the seltzer game   Martin's glasses are wild this episode... showed up with thick ass bifocals and thought we wouldn't talk shit... looking like Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys lol    Tony got lost in a Burlington Coat Factory parking lot... smh lol   Thanks for sticking around while we figure things out, Cheers!   Hit us up: info@7125media.com IS THAT MY BEER? @7125media | www.7125media.com | #ITMB   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSB26NozHLOxuhdmz70UW7w/playlists?view_as=subscriber   Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-that-my-beer/id1472318012   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5yfof4p5N4ToygUouKC33a?si=5gvLi9vPRhCmAm9cb6372A itmb, is that my beer, is that my beer?, is that my beer podcast, itmb podcast, 7125, 7125 media, 7125media, 7125media podcast, itmb episode   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSB26NozHLOxuhdmz70UW7w/playlists?view_as=subscriber

Patrick and Michael earn their cotton candy, exorcism, and programming merit badges this episode.

Series [Trusting Tha Process]: Today we release a new episode with a great friend of mine; Kimmy Wilson. Kimmy has been glowing & growing ever since we met 5 years ago. Kimmy Wilson is 30 years old and a single mother from San Bernardino, CA. She spent the past decade working at Burlington Coat Factory and is a fashion designer with a brand called “Rags Of Riches”. Between the two incomes, it was still a struggle for her. After many sleepless nights trying to keep the income flowing, Kimmy reconnected a friend and was introduce to Total Life Changes (TLC).  Listen to this episode to hear her story and go to her Instagram to see a complete change:Main page: https://www.instagram.com/fineasskimmy/Her daughter: https://www.instagram.com/phallynqueen/This episode is for you if you are:A single mother who balances work & lifeBuilding generational wealth for your kidsMotivation - “ if you love what you do, stay consistent in it” - KimmyBuilding a fashion brand A part of the Total Life Changes legacy In a relationship with a supportive partner* I apologize for the lack of connection at 4:22, I have added the translation below* Kimmy:" Always put your kids first, even in business, I have incorporate my daughter into my business. I may not be having her doing what I do, but an opportunity call, knowing the prouduct, taking the product. Becasue a lot of people dont know with this company, if anything happens to me, I can put the business in my daughters name, and she will take my earning and money at that time. Keep your kids first, do not let the money ruin it. There is a thin line betwwen busy and booked. Make sure to keep your children around you. When you are a single parent, you are the only one they have, so you don't want them to feel lonely, because you don't have the time because you want to make money. keep your kids first, and I know that from experience."

*WATCH ON YOUTUBE* Overwhelm holding you back from a much-needed rebrand? We hear you, but the longer you wait the harder AND more expensive it'll be to change. If your gut is telling you it's time, then it's time. In Episode 66 of the Passion to Profit Podcast, Liz and Vince discuss their rebrand strategy in both their personal brands and together as Irie Lemon. Vince shares the difference between good and bad branding, and Liz talks about her experience in rebranding and running into legal issues with the name of her business. Fire tips and advice, as always.   What you'll hear in today's episode:  The 5 easy steps to rebranding What to do before you rebrand Whether you should trademark your ish Why branding is everything Do fonts matter?   Helpful Links: What is the placebo effect? What is Burlington Coat Factory, and do they sell coats? The Secrets of Staying Power (On Iconic brands like Apple and Nike: From Inc Magazine, 2018)   Say hi: Connect with Irie Lemon on Instagram   Connect with Liz of The Lemon Bowl on Instagram   Connect with Vince of Irie Kitchen on Instagram    Help us out: Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review and send it to your best friend. If you have any topic or guest suggestions, let us know on Instagram or the comment section on YouTube! Stay tuned for weekly episodes filled with practical tips, amazing conversations, and incredible guests!    Produced by Attic Audio Productions, LLC

Mike Rainey from Dad Meat Podcast comes on to talk Burlington Coat Factory almost suicides, nu-metal, and percs.

This week on Yes But Why, we talk to Austin based actress and voiceover artist, Danu Uribe. Danu Uribe is an Emmy-nominated, full-time voice-over and on-camera talent for commercials, video games, film, animation, motion capture, corporate training, and eLearning projects. Danu has twenty years of audio and video studio experience. Danu earned her B.A. in Drama from Texas Woman's University, received her introduction to comedy performing with the critically acclaimed, multimedia sketch comedy troupe, The Latino Comedy Project, and then, completed studies in Writing and Improvisational Comedy at the historic Second City Training Center in Chicago. In our conversation, Danu talks about 4 years of touring the world with the live-action graphic novel show, The Intergalactic Nemesis. She talks about what a toll touring can take and yet how happy she is to have been able to do that before covid. I really loved the part where she told me about when The Intergalactic Nemesis was featured on CONAN. It was so wild that she got to perform with Conan O'Brien! In our chat, we talk about Danu's natural inclination toward entertaining. Danu tells me all about the path she has found in voice-over work and how much she enjoys the creative collaborations she has found in that industry. Danu also loves acting in film and TV and she is just SO DARN GOOD at it. Unlike many of my other guests on this podcast, I have gotten to see Danu perform onstage many times and she is always wonderful to watch! This is likely due to her dedication to her craft. Listen in as she talks about the work she has put in (and continues to do) to make sure she brings her best to the table. Danu is a hard worker and a kind soul and we had so much fun catching up. And you know what? Danu can be heard all over the country voicing brands such as Staples, Lowe's, Burlington Coat Factory, World Market and many more. Listen for her while you are Christmas shopping! Support Danu by watching her act on TV and in movies! Danu can be heard as the character “Toth” in the animated series, “Nomad of Nowhere" streaming on Amazon (added it to my list CHECK). Danu can also be seen in the feature film, "Call Me Brother" in live and virtual theaters now (dying to see that CHECK). Yes But Why Podcast is a proud member of the HC Universal Network family of podcasts. Visit us at HCUniversalNetwork.com to join in on the fun. This episode of Yes But Why podcast is sponsored by audible - get your FREE audiobook download and your 30 day free trial at http://www.audibletrial.com/YESBUTWHY. This episode of Yes But Why is also sponsored by PodcastCadet.com. Swing on by PodcastCadet.com to get help for all your podcasting needs! Go to PodcastCadet.com and put in offer code YBY20 to get 20% off your first consultation!

"The Sade Champagne Show" (S1Ep11) Each episode is full of Inspiration, Encouragement, Entertainment, and Empowerment. Join Sade for a Celebrity Guest Interview with American Curve model and healthy body image activist Hunter McGrady who is signed to Wilhelmina Models Curve Division Los Angeles and New York and has worked with companies like Nordstrom, Forever 21, Levi's, Lucky Brand Jeans, Burlington Coat Factory, and can be seen in Melissa McCarthy's new clothing line “Seven7” campaigns. She will be taking a few of your questions live on air after her interview! Also featuring the segments #MotivationalMoments with Lisa Lewolt, #TanCandyStyle with Tanya Chisholm, and #WhatsGoinOn with Christina Renee and special guest the only original member of Grindhard Radio, Jit Chronicles.. Call-in @ 323-693-3043 and press "1" to stream LIVE and CHAT with Sade, the cast and her guest. Presented by: GrindHard Radio. #SadeChampagneShow

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Zackary Arthur. Born and raised in Southern California, nine-year-old Zackary has been acting since the age of six. He has dozens of short films and commercials to his credit, including spots for Honda, Toys"R"Us, Kaiser, Rabbids Invasion, Burlington Coat Factory and voice-over spots for Build-A-Bear. Along with his brother Aiden Arthur, Zack plays the Pals Club President in the new “PALS” series directed by Zachary Gordon. He also appears in Disney's "Best Friends Whenever" as young Naldo and in the CBS pilot "The Half of It," as Jon Dore's son ‘Will.' Zack continues to study his craft at Gray Acting Studios, and his other talents include singing, dancing, climbing trees and drawing.   

Friday Night Joy Presents: Christians in the Arts with Bj Gianni  BJ Gianni, Founder of Talented Young Folks (TYF), has been featured in several national and regional TV and Print advertisements to include the Gerber Life College Plan, University of MD, Payless Shoes and Burlington Coat Factory. With more than 15 years of industry experience she now spends her free time teaching industry skills to youth in her community and educating parents on safe, cost effective avenues to pursue their child's acting career. As a DC area native, she is very excited about working with local aspiring and established youth to share her experiences. BJ is represented by several modeling and commercial agencies from DC to NYC and along the East Coast. Through her interactive and energetic workshops,  she hopes to provide similar outcomes for every youth to cross her path.  BJ Gianni, Founder www.TalentedYoungFolks.com Twitter: @BJGianni 347-422-7893 When Christians Speak Talk Radio Broadcasts - "The Abounding Grace Show" with Minister Vanester Williams - Tuesdays @ 7:00 pm; "Declaring The Finished Work with Rev. Pat Randall" - Thursdays @ 12:00 Noon; "Friday Night Joy with Rev. Ray and Friends" - Fridays @ 7:00 pm; "Stronger Together with Sister Valerie Miller and Rev. Ray" - Sundays @ 7:00 pm, "The Alabaster Box with Prophet Carla R Johnson"-Saturdays @ 7:00pm 24 hour gospel music on http://www.live365.com/stations/gospelmanray. Contact us @ (571) 317-1466 or wenchristiansspeak@gmail.com. Free New android app and Itunes app are available on whenchristiansspeak.com.

BJ Gianni, Founder of Talented Young Folks (TYF), has been featured in several national and regional TV and Print advertisements to include the Gerber Life College Plan, University of MD, Payless Shoes and Burlington Coat Factory. With more than 15 years of industry experience she now spends her free time teaching industry skills to youth in her community and educating parents on safe, cost effective avenues to pursue their child's acting career. As a DC area native, she is very excited about working with local aspiring and established youth to share her experiences. BJ is represented by several modeling and commercial agencies from DC to NYC and along the East Coast. Through her interactive and energetic workshops,  she hopes to provide similar outcomes for every youth to cross her path.  BJ Gianni, Founder www.TalentedYoungFolks.com Twitter: @TYFWorkshops 347-422-7893 When Christians Speak Talk Radio Broadcasts - "The Abounding Grace Show" with Minister Vanester Williams - Wednesdays @ 7:00 pm; "Declaring The Finished Work with Rev. Pat Randall" - Thursdays @ 12:00 Noon; "Friday Night Joy with Rev. Ray and Friends" - Fridays @ 7:00 pm; "Stronger Together with Rev. Ray and Sister Valerie Miller" - Sundays @ 7:00 pm "Some of the music provided tonight from Mevio's Music Alley. Check it out at 'music.mevio.com'"

Re Broadcast BJ Gianni, Founder of Talented Young Folks (TYF), has been featured in several national and regional TV and Print advertisements to include the Gerber Life College Plan, University of MD, Payless Shoes and Burlington Coat Factory. With more than 15 years of industry experience she now spends her free time teaching industry skills to youth in her community and educating parents on safe, cost effective avenues to pursue their child's acting career. As a DC area native, she is very excited about working with local aspiring and established youth to share her experiences. BJ is represented by several modeling and commercial agencies from DC to NYC and along the East Coast. Through her interactive and energetic workshops,  she hopes to provide similar outcomes for every youth to cross her path.  BJ Gianni, Founder www.TalentedYoungFolks.com Twitter: @TYFWorkshops 347-422-7893 When Christians Speak Radio Broadcast Shows: Thursdays @ 12noon Declaring The Finished Work with Sister Pat Randall , “Friday Night Joy” With Rev Ray @7pm and Sunday Evening, “Bread of Life” with Rev. Ray @ 5 pm.

BJ Gianni, Founder of Talented Young Folks (TYF), has been featured in several national and regional TV and Print advertisements to include the Gerber Life College Plan, University of MD, Payless Shoes and Burlington Coat Factory. With more than 15 years of industry experience she now spends her free time teaching industry skills to youth in her community and educating parents on safe, cost effective avenues to pursue their child's acting career. As a DC area native, she is very excited about working with local aspiring and established youth to share her experiences. BJ is represented by several modeling and commercial agencies from DC to NYC and along the East Coast. Through her interactive and energetic workshops,  she hopes to provide similar outcomes for every youth to cross her path.  BJ Gianni, Founder www.TalentedYoungFolks.com Twitter: @TYFWorkshops 347-422-7893 When Christians Speak Radio Broadcast Shows: Thursdays @ 12noon Declaring The Finished Work with Sister Pat Randall , “Friday Night Joy” With Rev Ray @7pm and Sunday Evening, “Bread of Life” with Rev. Ray @ 5 pm. RevRay@whenchristiansspeak.com "Some of the music provided tonight from Mevio's Music Alley. Check it out at 'music.mevio.com'"

Author and all-around good dude, Brian Diaz dropped by my office to talk about Guns N' Roses "Appetite For Destruction" and how his world was changed while in a Burlington Coat Factory. As an adult, Diaz (I don't think I've ever called him Brian) ended up working for Guns N' Roses, so we also talk about how that affected him after having spent so many years loving and absorbing this album.