Podcast appearances and mentions of Dan McCarthy

Freddy Gray and Dan McCarthy discuss the LA riots, why they are different to the protests on Capitol Hill and how Trump will respond.

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss this and other issues (like poor Mark Levin). Sponsors: Whether you're running a business, doing a side hustle, flipping real estate, or just sick of handing over half your paycheck to fund wars, debt, and nonsense, my friend Matthew Sercely can legally minimize your tax bill. If you joined me on the Tom Woods Cruise you remember how great his presentation was. Pick up a free copy of his Agorist Tax Toolkit at: AgoristTaxAdvice.com/woods CrowdHealth: Code: WOODS Guest's Website: Modern Age: https://ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2649

John Chernesky, the SVP of North American Sales at NCL, has spent more than three decades in travel, but only just celebrated his two-year anniversary with NCL. In this episode, Chernesky takes some time to talk to TMR's Dan McCarthy about raising twins, celebrating Prince, and grading NCL's partnership with the travel trade.

Today I'm joined by Dan McCarthy, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Robert H Smith School of Business, for a fascinating discussion on how customer-based corporate valuations can be used to predict the future.   Sponsored by https://www.b2bframeworks.com   Brought to you in partnership with https://awardsinternational.com

No matter how simple a metric's name makes it sound, the details are often downright devilish. What is a website visit? What is revenue? What is a customer? Go one level deeper with a metric like customer acquisition cost (CAC) or customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV, depending on how you acronym), and things can get messy in a hurry. In some cases, there are multiple "right" definitions, depending on how the metric is being used. In some cases, there are incentive structures to thumb the definitional scale one way or another. In some cases, a hastily made choice becomes a well-established, yet misguided, norm. In some cases, public companies simply throw their hands up and stop reporting a key metric! Dan McCarthy, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, spends a lot of time and thought culling through public filings and disclosures therein trying to make sense of metric definitions, so he was a great guest to have to dig into the topic! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Independent councillor Dan McCarthy has tabled a motion ahead of the monthly meeting of Kerry County Council. He’s calling for the council to consider putting together a fund from the dog licences fees to compensate sheep farmers who have lost sheep from dog attacks.

Dan McCarthy, Independent Councillor in Kerry and friend of Michael Gaine

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss the recent trajectory of the Trump administration and what it portends for the future. Sponsors: Persist SEO & Woods Mastermind Guest's Website: Modern Age: https://ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2626

Today, we're talking with Dan McCarthy, VP of Product at Cyvl, an AI-powered mapping tool for transportation infrastructure. In this episode, Dan talks about: Using lessons from building digital products to improve the physical world around us Dan's repeatable playbook for launching into new industries—and the pitfalls to avoid. How a drop in data ingestion costs allowed Cyvl to open up a new, digitally enhanced way of looking at the world Why nailing the entire go-to-market strategy is just as critical as the product itself Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-mccarthy-24543436/ Cyvl: https://cyvl.com/ Resources Unlock revenue with the zone of benefit | Oji Udezue, CPO (Typeform, Twitter, Calendly): https://youtu.be/2WuAGcRwdv0 Build product like Linear | Nan Yu, Head of Product (Linear, Everlane, BOA): https://youtu.be/7ISWLoQtNOc Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:49 Understanding Digital Twin Architecture 02:40 Challenges and Opportunities in Infrastructure Management 04:27 The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Cyvl 08:24 Future Vision for Cyvl and Infrastructure Management 12:26 Navigating Vertical Markets and Go-to-Market Strategies 19:34 Learning from Industry Transitions 32:18 Outro Follow LaunchPod on YouTube We have a new YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/@LaunchPod.byLogRocket)! Watch full episodes of our interviews with PM leaders and subscribe! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket combines frontend monitoring, product analytics, and session replay to help software teams deliver the ideal product experience. Try LogRocket for free today. (https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Dan McCarthy.

Independent Councillor, Dan McCarthy is manager of Kenmare Co-operative and a close friend of Mike Gaine who was last seen in the town last Thursday.

Syndicated columnist and Modern Age editor Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss what the State of the Union said about Donald Trump, and about the Democrats. Sponsors: Factor: Coupon Code: woods50off & Persist SEO Guest's Website: Modern Age: ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2616

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Professor of Marketing at Maryland. Dan returns for the third time to share research on the food delivery business and how marketers can "bend the growth curve" by implementing a subscription model. He discusses the engineering behind various subscription models and why most marketers should "at least" consider these programs. Key topics include: the difference between "promiscuous" and "heavy" buyers; balancing the "give versus the get," and how AI may drive the implementation of more models. Tune in to hear why charging for membership is a good idea.Are subscription models the future of business growth?

Dan McCarthy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute joins us to talk about what the next four years are likely to look like. Sponsors: Dave Loffredo lost 60 pounds and took eight inches off his waist thanks in large part to his fitness accountability group inside the Tom Woods School of Life. We're about much more than weight loss, of course. Give it a try at OneBuckTrial.com & Persist SEO Guest's Website: Modern Age: ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2596

Dan McCarthy joins us for a review of the philosophical and institutional changes that American conservatism has undergone just in the past 10 years. Sponsors: Bitcoin Mentor & CrowdHealth: Code: WOODS Guest's Website: Modern Age: ModernAgeJournal.com  Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist Show notes for Ep. 2585

Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss the election and what the next 4 years might look like, as well as what happens to Liz Cheney now. Sponsors: : Code: WOODS & Guest's Website: Modern Age:   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

Finding Purpose and Identity: A Conversation Between Brothers w/ Dan McCarthy:: Ep 216 MMTBPIn this episode, we talk to my brother, Dan McCarthy, who practices law and plays music.We talk about shared experiences and our divergent paths in life. Dan, reflects on his early musical aspirations, influenced by his piano instructor, and his admiration for artists like Bruce Hornsby and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dan also discusses his legal career, which was sparked by a landlord-tenant dispute and a real estate seminar by Alan M. Barry. Despite initial challenges, including being waitlisted for law school, Dan eventually pursued law, finding success and satisfaction in his career. The conversation delves into our family dynamics, the pressures of living up to expectations, and the importance of self-awareness and following one's passion.Highlights:Early Musical Influences and ChallengesChallenges with Music TeachersTransition to Law SchoolFamily Dynamics and Career Aspirations Find Dan:https://www.butzel.com/professionals-attorneys-daniel-mccarthy______________________________________________________________________****SUBSCRIBE/RATE/FOLLOW the Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast:www.mmtbp.comwww.instagram.com/mostlymiddletnbusinespodcastwww.instagram.com/jimmccarthyvosTiktok: @jimmccarthyvos __________________________________________________________Shoutout to Matt Wilson for lending his voice to the new intro of MMTBPFollow him and his podcast from which I may have borrowed the *mostly* concept:https://linktr.ee/mamwmw___________________________________________________________If you like Jim's Boston Scallys, click here to shop and order yours!https://www.bostonscally.com/a/refer-a-friend/redeem/mqgpwi3u0zgm89vaxnv5crzvlolevo82rvcygsn5/1668 ___________________________________________________________***You hear Jim mention it on almost every episode, ME vs. WE and how 2023 will be 1943 all over again….order “PENDULUM:How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future”:https://a.co/d/7oKK7Ip_________________________________________________________________The co-author of Pendulum wrote a myriad of other books and started a non-profit 21st Century Non-Traditional Business School that you should really check out: Wizard Academy - www.wizardacademy.org______________________________________________________________________Curious about podcasting? This podcast (and many others) is produced by www.itsyourshow.co#billionaire #business #entrepreneurship #fashion #love #marketing #meme #middle #mindset #motivation #nashville #nashvilletennessee #nashvilletn #nature #podcast #podcasters #podcastersofinstagram #podcasting #podcastlife #podcasts #podcastshow #smallbusiness #tennessee #tennesseelife #law #lawyer #attorney #music

Following up major bump in the poles for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has seen his own poll numbers rebound in recent weeks and he goes into election week with considerable momentum but still in a tight race. Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

Episode 239: What hidden insights can customer behavior data analysis reveal about how successful one food delivery app may be over another? Discover how analysis of externally sourced customer behavior data can fuel dramatic improvements in revenue forecasts and strategic decisions. See how competitor data analysis can help identify strengths and weaknesses that are otherwise hidden. In this episode of Customer Confidential, we're joined by Dan McCarthy, director and co-founder of Theta and Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Dan shares findings from Theta and Bain & Company's jointly published consumer purchase data study, “Customer Lifetime Value across Food Delivery Competitors.” Together, Dan and Rob explore how they used a proprietary database of credit card transaction data from Pyxis to track customer behavior for subscription services over five years. They describe how accounting for corresponding economic factors like seasonality and the Covid-19 pandemic helped improve forecasts of transaction velocity, spending, and retention. Learn which food delivery app had the best customer loyalty, the most customers, and highest per-customer spending. Guest: Dan McCarthy, Director and Co-Founder of Theta, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland, College Park Host: Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company Give Us Feedback: We'd love to hear from you. Help us enhance your podcast experience by providing feedback here in our listener survey. Want to get in touch? Send a note to host Rob Markey here. Time-Stamped List of Topics Covered: [02:00] Introduction to customer behavior analysis and business forecasting [05:15] How companies can use historical data to predict customer lifetime value [10:00] Insights from customer data and the role of subscription services [15:30] The impact of external factors like economic shifts and market changes on consumer behavior [20:00] How businesses can improve acquisition and retention strategies using data [25:00] Using customer lifetime value to forecast future revenue and business growth Time-Stamped Notable Quotes: [02:45] “The notion of having a consistent data set with multiple companies in it so you can compare … all these different food delivery companies [means] you can explicitly see them and you can see the same consumers buying across them.” [05:37] “It's primarily taking these different vintages of customers—where a vintage is defined by, ‘When did that customer make their very first purchase with your firm?'—and then within that vintage, what we want to explain is what these individual customers are going to do in the future.” [07:42] “[The data] is what allows us to say things like, is this company acquiring customers well? Are they retaining customers well? How frequently are they buying? And how does that compare across different companies?” Additional Resources: Customer Lifetime Value across Food Delivery Competitors Pyxis by Bain & Company

Jerry spoke to independent councillor Dan McCarthy about floods in Kenmare over the weekend.

Dan McCarthy, syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate and a vice president at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, joins us for a general political discussion that includes thinking the unthinkable. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Professor of Marketing at Maryland. Dan uses a customer lifetime value (CLTV) analysis to show how Peloton's pursuit of growth after a very successful launch negatively impacted its financials and cratered its stock price, leaving its future uncertain. Key decision points include: misreading Covid trends as a permanent demand shift; price decreases which backfired; the importance of cohort analysis and churn rates; and the unintended consequences of chasing growth through rowers and treadmills. Tune in to learn why "Valuation is a painkiller" and "Everything can be good, but it comes at a price."Dive into the dramatic journey of Peloton in our latest episode of CMO Confidential, "Peloton's Rise & Fall: What Marketers Must Learn." Hosted by Mike Linton, former CMO of Best Buy and eBay, this episode features Dr. Dan McCarthy, a tenured professor at the University of Maryland and a pioneer in customer lifetime value (CLTV) analytics. Key topics include Peloton's strategic missteps, the impact of aggressive growth strategies, and the essential lessons marketers can draw from this cautionary tale. Tune in to hear Dr. McCarthy's expert analysis on how Peloton's quest for rapid expansion led to a significant downturn, and what this means for marketers navigating similar challenges. Learn how to balance growth with profitability and the importance of understanding your total addressable market. This insightful discussion also explores the role of customer acquisition costs and retention strategies in sustaining business success. Subscribe to CMO Confidential for more invaluable marketing insights and stay ahead in the ever-evolving marketing landscape!CHAPTERS:00:00 - Intro00:40 - Dan McCarthy02:00 - Customer Lifetime Value05:20 - Peloton Story10:40 - Data Sources12:14 - Peloton's Evolving Strategy17:34 - Profitability Analysis: Peloton's Price Cut Impact19:30 - Overhead Expenses and CLV Impact21:35 - Peloton's Growth Strategy Insights25:27 - Communicating Growth Challenges to Management29:55 - Valuation as a Business Strategy32:50 - Peloton's Strategic Decisions33:29 - Practical Audience Advice33:30 - ClosingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Kamala phenomenon has been something to behold: she gained no traction in the 2020 primaries, has radical-left positions she's running away from, won't talk to the press, and isn't all that bright, and yet the numbers with the betting sites suddenly went crazy in her favor. Can she sustain it, and even win? What does Trump need to do? Dan McCarthy joins us. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Guest's Twitter:

David Gornoski, host of A Neighbor's Choice, rejoins Bob to explain how mimetic theorist Rene Girard influence Trump's running mate, via Peter Thiel.Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:The YouTube version of this interview.The Monetary Metals 12% silver opportunity.JD Vance's essay on his conversion.David Gornoski's A Neighbor's Choice.Dan McCarthy on the Tom Woods Show is happy with JD Vance.David Gornoski explains Girard on the BMS.Help support the Bob Murphy Show.

Syndicated columnist and Modern Age editor Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss the JD Vance VP nomination and what it means for the Republican Party. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Modern Age:   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

The question had been asked: what if Trump is convicted? Will he be irreparably damaged among independents? Is there a Plan B? Syndicated columnist and Modern Age editor Dan McCarthy joins us to discuss where Trump stands now, along with many other topics in this potpourri episode. Sponsors: & Guest's Website: Modern Age:   Guest's Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

Daniel McCarthy is Assistant Professor at Emory University Goizieta School of Business. In this interview, Dan unpacks several deep layers of understanding around measuring retention and customer lifetime value. He highlights a concern that businesses state improved performance against reduced churn rates. It is not that simple. He dives into differences of retention and churn measurement across subscription and non-subscription, across different industries and even the impact of a free trial in a subscription business. If you are in the industry of loyalty, you need to listen to Dan McCarthy's view on measuring churn, retention and customer lifetime value.Hosted by Amanda Cromhout Show notes:1) Daniel McCarthy 2) Emory University Goizieta School of Business3) #64: Customer-Based Corporate Valuation - Daniel McCarthy of Emory University4) #338: Covid's Aftermath, Customer Health, and Customer-Based Forecasting with Daniel McCarthy of Emory University

Donald Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party's convention last weekend (all three major candidates were invited). Jeff Deist and Dan McCarthy join me to discuss the meaning and significance of it all. Sponsors: & : This Father's Day don't get dad another pair of socks or a knick-knack that'll just clutter up the house. Get him steaks, with a gift package from Omaha Steaks. Get a special discount when you use code WOODS when shopping Father's Day gift packages at .

A CMO Confidential Interview with Dr. Daniel McCarthy, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory's Goizueta Business School. Dan discusses how marketing has recently taken its knocks, why he created a CLTV class, how companies can start developing their own models, and how customer math can be used to increase marketing accountability. Key topics include: why it is challenging to agree on key modeling variables like acquisition cost; how CLTV can bridge the translation gap between marketers and finance; and why business schools are slow to evolve. Tune in to hear Warby Parker and Wayfair case studies. #customerlifetimevalue #marketing #marketingdata 00:00 Welcome to CMO Confidential: Inside the World of Chief Marketing Officers00:40 Introducing Dr. Dan McCarthy: The Genius Behind Customer Lifetime Value01:38 The Marketing Landscape: Challenges and Changes in the Digital Age03:46 Deep Dive into Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) with Dr. McCarthy06:20 The Practicalities of CLV: From Theory to Application12:20 The Journey of Creating a CLV Course: Inspiration and Impact14:10 The Slow Evolution of Business School Curriculums in the Digital Era18:45 CLV in Practice: Warby Parker Case Study24:56 The Importance of Language and Disclosure in Marketing27:44 Advice for Marketers: Embracing Financial Acumen30:22 Compensation and Accountability in Marketing Departments36:58 Dan McCarthy's Personal Anecdotes and Final ThoughtsLinkedin: CMOConfidentialSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1MzXYx0wRB3thgZitlfJoS?si=406b1b98eca6470fApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cmo-confidential/id1668226567See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Independent councillor Dan McCarthy who represents the Kenmare Electoral Area is canvassing from University Hospital Kerry after contracting cellulitis.

We are thrilled to unveil the latest milestone in Modern Age's evolution: a new website! Join us this week as we engage in an insightful discussion with Dan McCarthy and Andrew Beck on the noteworthy updates to ISI's Modern Age Journal.Andrew Beck, esteemed co-founder of Beck & Stone, has collaborated closely with ISI to craft a visually stunning and seamlessly navigable platform, ensuring that accessing our esteemed publication is now more convenient than ever before.In this conversation, we delve into the meticulous design process, the strategic vision driving this transformation, and the profound impact it will have on our readership. Join us as we explore the intersection of tradition and modernity, and celebrate the dawn of a new era for Modern Age.Modern Age History:Founded in 1957 by Russell Kirk and Henry Regnery, Modern Age has been helping to shape the conservative mind and intelligent discourse in the United States (and abroad) for more than six decades. Under the leadership of acclaimed editor Dan McCarthy, Modern Age guides readers through these contentious, confusing times by applying the wisdom of “the permanent things” to the crises of our age and to what Kirk called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour. Modern Age is now available in print and digital editions. Print subscribers also receive complimentary digital access.WebsiteSubscribe HereUse the code MODERNAGE1957 for discounted on a one-year print subscription!

Dan McCarthy, editor of the venerable Modern Age, runs us through the most likely VP picks for Donald Trump, the motivations behind each, who the best one is, and who are most likely. Sponsors: & : Hillsdale is offering 40+ free self-paced courses on topics of great importance. I recommend "CS Lewis on Christianity," where you'll examine some of Lewis' classic works, including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, to see what Lewis had to say about Scripture, prayer, suffering, joy, heaven, and hell. Link:

EP318 - Temu Deep Dive with Earnest Analytics  Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep Temu, the online marketplace operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, that has become the fastest growing retailer in history. Joining us on the episode is Michael Maloof is the Head of Marketing for Earnest Analytics. Earnest works with world-class data partners to acquires, anonymize, and productize insight about the entire U.S. Economy. They have posted numerous insights about Temu in the US this year: Feb 28: Temu's 2024 Super Bowl ad blitz failed to accelerate growth March 5: Temu is growing fastest among high income earners March 12: Almost half of Wish, AliExpress customers shop at Temu In this episode we cover who Temu is, how big they have become, who their customers are and what retailers they are likely impacting, their go to market strategy (and especially their marketing spend), the controversy around their use of the Global Postal Treaty, and some of their potential risks. We also explore where they could go next. If you're in the commerce space, you'll want to make sure you are up to speed on Temu. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 318 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. 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 Scott show. This is episode 318 being recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg. And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott show listeners. Jason, one of the topics that is coming up a lot this year, we talked a lot at a lot in our recap and our preview is Temu. By many measures, people think they're one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in history. If you watch the Super Bowl, I think they spent $8 trillion on ads there. So we want to do a deep dive into this and cover a number of topics. We want to talk about a little background around Temu. What's it mean for U.S. retailers? And, you know, it's a Chinese company. Does it even matter? If yes, why? Because Temu isn't public and they are a Chinese company, they don't really disclose any information. So we wanted to bring on a guest that is basically a Temu expert. So we looked around and we found Michael Maloof. He is the head of marketing at Ernest Analytics. Ernest works with world-class data partners to acquire, anonymize, and productize insights about the U.S. economy. They have posted lots of articles. This is how we found Michael. I think you know him as well from the trade show circuit. So he's going to help us do this deep dive into what's going on at Temu. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael? Michael: [1:59] Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show. Big fan of your annual predictions and the work you guys do. So I'm head of marketing at Earnest Analytics. We're the leading credit card retail pricing and healthcare claims data provider for investors and retailers. Before Earnest, I was actually a tech and telco analyst over at Goldman. The two credit card data sets we work with now, Orion and Vela, are probably the most pertinent to my conversations about the consumer economy and certainly this conversation today about TMU. They sourced respectively from a large account aggregator, like a budgeting app, and part of a POS system in the US. And Ernest essentially takes these massive and messy data sets, normalizes structures, and then puts them onto our platform so everyone from portfolio managers to marketers can see this third-party data. For example, you'd see market share, competitive benchmarking, customer behavior, revenue predictions, and macro trends for thousands of companies, including TMU. Scot: [3:03] Awesome. Thanks, Michael. And then, so which sector did you cover when you were an analyst at Goldman Sachs? Michael: [3:08] Tech and telco. So anything in the tech space, we had a few marketplaces in there, telecom companies. It's been a while though. Ernest has been my home now for seven years. Scot: [3:20] Okay. Was this in the Anthony Noto era you were there? Michael: [3:23] This was in the vera rossi era she was my my lead where we recovered uh latin american tech and telco. Scot: [3:30] Very cool awesome yeah they did goldman did the channelizer ipo so i get to know the team there pretty well awesome well before we jump into the data which we're excited to kind of hear what you have to share here jason i know this has become a very hot topic in your world you you You spoke on it at NRF. In your day job, you're getting tons of questions about this. I think you're booked out solid with Tmoo briefings. So those people pay big money for it, and our listeners don't pay. Give us the free version of your backgrounder on Tmoo. Jason: [4:05] Yeah, thanks, Scott. And I'm sure we'll spice in some other tidbits as we go, but I'll try to give a concise bullet. it. Temu is a subsidiary of a company that used to be called Pinduoduo in China. It's now called PDD Holdings, which is infinitely easier to spell, by the way. And PDD Holdings is one of the largest e-commerce companies in China. On a market cap basis, they keep flip-flopping with Alibaba. So they're super competitive. They're way north of like $400 billion in GMV in China and had a really interesting trajectory, but a couple of years ago, they launched Tmoo into first UK and then US, now 49 other markets as a new retail concept. And so a couple of things I'd want folks to know before we dive in with Michael, first of all, the name is a loose English acronym for team up price down. So I always pronounce Tmoo as in team. [5:08] There are multiple pronunciations out there, even from Tmoo employees. So I'm not sure there's an official pronunciation. In the United States, they launched in September of 2022. So they're about 18 months old now. And most folks were not familiar with them until, a surprise, three months after launching, they bought a Super Bowl ad. So they became familiar to millions of Americans with the Shop Like a Billionaire ad that ran in the Super Bowl in 2023. And then as Scott alluded to, they bought five ads in the Super Bowl this year. So they haven't disclosed what they paid. A normal 30-second spot in the Super Bowl costs about $7 million. They ran four ads during the Super Bowl and one during the postgame. So estimates are in the kind of $20 to $30 million that they spent just on that ad. There's a bunch of estimates for how big they are in the U.S. I'm eager to hear what Michael thinks, but his old rivals at Morgan Stanley have them at about $16 billion in GMV in the U.S. But more interesting, Morgan Stanley estimates they're going to be $32 billion by 2030. So you think about a retail company that launched in September of 2022, and then in the first year, business sold $16 billion worth of stuff. That's the fastest growing retailer of all times. We do know from other sources that they get more traffic every year than Target. [6:36] They've been the most downloaded shopping apps on the Android and Apple app stores since they were born. So they've kind of owned the top of that list. And a couple other little interesting things. They are a marketplace. They have invented a model they call next generation manufacturing. So they're a marketplace. It's all three-piece sellers that are selling goods on Temu. But unlike traditional Western-based marketplaces, Temu does a lot more of the work, of listing the products and fulfilling the products for the factory. So they may, if you're a factory, they say the only thing you need is a cellular internet connection, and they provide you all the infrastructure to become a successful seller on Temu. There's somewhere between 80 and 100,000 Chinese factories that are currently sellers on the marketplace. And then one big innovation is this week, they're turning on the ability for U.S. Marketplace sellers to sell and fulfill their goods from the U.S. as well. So one interesting question about a marketplace is, are they competing for sellers with Amazon and Walmart? And now they're bringing that fight to American soil. So that, I feel like, is enough to get us started. There's certainly an interesting company that's worth following. [7:52] The way I originally discovered Earnest is through this show. One of our most popular guests, Dan McCarthy, has been on a few times talking about his his CLV methodologies. And our listeners have really enjoyed his his commentary. He has partnered with Earnest Data several times to do some really interesting analytics. And you guys at Earnest have published a couple of those as thought leadership. And so that's how I first met you. And then, Michael, I noticed you published like three articles on Temu this year. Michael: [8:22] That's right. Right. Teamio has been one of the top client asked for themes. It's definitely something we're seeing a lot in the press. We work a lot with those thought leaders as well. And that's something that we're getting a lot of questions on from everyone from business to fashion to Dan McCarthy. So glad to answer any questions there. We are kind of in a unique spot, kind of have the dashboard on the consumer economy, if you will. Basically what's going on within the last few days we can see everything from customer acquisition they have to their gross market merchandise value. Scot: [8:56] Got it let's let's start at the basics and let's pretend you know so i see Temu and you know it looks like they've got and you know one of my theories is it feels a lot like wish.com so it's really kind of cheap stuff slower ship going to what i would call value-oriented and consumers, you know, in your data, what, what kind of customer are, is buying this and then how fast do you think they are really growing? Michael: [9:22] Yeah, let me answer the second one first. Timmy's growing very quickly. Like you said, from late 2022 onwards, our data is showing double digit month to month growth, which is just explosive, right as it became a household name. In the first three months, for context, it had roughly as many weekly active users in the US as the largest fast fashion brand, Shein, and within 10 months had surpassed Shein in sales. And it had taken Shein years to get to that point. So really, a much shorter timeline. For an idea of size, about 18% of US households have shopped at TeamView since its launch. And in terms of GMV, in February, we saw about 1% of Amazon's US GMV. If you look at that, if you just break that out over the whole year, I believe in 2023, their net sales were something like over $500 billion. You're looking at around $50 billion in gross merchandise value moving through the service. But nevertheless, it's kind of not made really meaningful inroads with the largest online brands. I mean, it's still 1% in a good month. And that's actually decelerated since 2023. In fact, February of 2023 had fewer sales than January, despite the really heavy advertising spend you mentioned. [10:47] So yeah, there's some signs that the growth is kind of changing there. Mainly that retention is increasing even while this like... [11:01] New customer acquisition-based sales growth model is slowing down. TeamU's average customer lifetime value tracks higher than Walmart. And we're seeing customers becoming much more loyal. So that's an interesting kind of plus for them while sales in total are kind of hitting a lull. But yeah, let's talk about who those customers are too. It's definitely been one of the more interesting finds from our data. Despite the really low price points and that kind of gamified discount system, TeamView's US customer base skews middle to high income, actually. Sales among customers earning that over $190K, which is obviously very high up there, they're the fastest growing income bracket. And that's from May to January, May of 23 to January 24. So those sales to customers earning under $55K, like less than the median U.S. household income, that's actually the slowest growing. So today, about 44% of TeamU sales come from earners making over $130K. Not only do high-income earners account for the largest share, they're outgrowing. We just think that TeamU resonates mostly with customers with more disposable income. income, people who can afford to take a gamble on an item that might not work out. [12:27] You buy a floor mat for $5, it doesn't work. A middle high income person might just say, hey, it was $5 wasted, but the poor people don't always look at that. They're looking for a little bit more bang for their buck, can't afford that type of gamble. Yeah, it's interesting. Scot: [12:46] Cool and then you've you know you mentioned that they're you know basically their ltv is going up do you have any insight into why are they getting better at like maybe predictive analytics or recommendation engine or you know they see jason bought some gadget and then they they know he's now a gadget geek and they kind of start targeting do you have any insight into what's driving that that bump in LTV? Michael: [13:09] That's a good question. So I don't really have much insight into that. I try not to get out over my skis in terms of the data that I have available to me. We're looking at retention. We're looking for what's called a smile. Dan McCarthy talks about it all the time, which is over time as a company starts to bring back more customers that stopped stopped spending with them. And that's been pretty rare to see in e-commerce history. That's something they've managed to do. How they're doing that, I'm not totally sure. So it's definitely going to be the key for them to continue growing as new customer growth slows down, though. Scot: [13:52] Yeah. Jason, do you know? Jason: [13:54] Yeah. Well, so I don't know. I just want to point out that while Michael is wisely trying to not get over his skis, I live over my skis. So I'll tumble down the ski slope once again. One of the things I maybe should have said up front or maybe apparent to a lot of people is T-Moves marketing spend isn't just that Super Bowl ad. They're spending a fortune on digital ads and almost certainly losing a lot of money on every sale. So there's a Wall Street Journal article that came out this week that said that Temu or PDD overall spent over $2 billion with Facebook and was Facebook's largest advertiser. They're also Google's largest advertiser in the U.S. And so they're buying a lot of customers. And the the Wall Street Journal estimates that they're losing $6 on every sale. They're spending so much on customer acquisition. And so in that first year, they're doing a ton of marketing. There's a ton of people that never heard of Temu. They're acquiring those customers. They're getting that first order. [14:54] And, you know, a mini version of this is what Wish did until they ran out of money. But though it doesn't seem like there was a lot of evidence that Wish ever got traction, right? Like they didn't get those repeat orders. And what I think we're seeing And what I've seen in some of the data that Michael shared with us is that Temu very much is growing that LTV, getting repeat orders, even as the flood of digital marketing they're spending is sort of losing some efficacy as the law of large numbers kick in. And then I would also say Pinduoduo in China and now Temu in the U.S. Is very well known for their gamification. So they have lots of clever gamification mechanics on their websites, group buying, contests, gifts, one-time deals that are all like very carefully crafted to entice you to make an incremental purchase and to make an unplanned purchase. So I think all of those things appear to be working and then they hit you on social media with, you know, a huge spend, you know, right when you're, you're doom scrolling and expressing some, some purchase intent through your clicks. Scot: [16:08] Very cool. How about you, Michael, you mentioned this, this, this slowdown, which is exactly opposite of what I would have thought given the Superbowl ads. What do you, does the data show you anything there? Is it? Normal or like what what's going on. Michael: [16:23] Yeah i mean i don't know i don't know what would be normal for this company that's still up hundreds of percent a year but when i'm looking at at month over month growth which is the kind of the best way i can think to to look at it it is pretty remarkable there was some sort of a step change in august of last year where it went from growing double double digits each month to growing just single digits or down. The holidays, December actually was smaller than November in terms of their sales. And January was smaller still, makes sense. But February, also very challenged in terms of sales. I'm wondering if they're in a sort of spiral in terms of the new customer's first time kind of buying frenzy is over, or if this is a shift towards very purposely trying to get people in the door and they're just actually tapping brakes a bit on advertising spending. I'm not totally sure what this signals just yet. Scot: [17:35] Got it. Okay. Jason: [17:36] Is it safe to say that there's no clear evidence that spending $30 million million dollars on the Super Bowl had a super observable impact on their sales. Michael: [17:46] Okay. Yeah. So the Super Bowl. Let's talk about that. The million dollar question or $30 million question, I guess. The answer is probably not. There are a lot of ways to measure advertising effectiveness, as you guys know better than most. Brand awareness and net promoter score. But yeah, for a young company like this facing slowing new customer growth, I'd imagine they're looking to move the needle with each of these like big marketing events and the data just suggests that their multiple ads on February 11th had no meaningful boost in sales actually TeamU saw a noticeable deceleration in sales growth following the event actually kind of, like sales were significantly slower in the next few days. So unless they're measuring this on a much longer timeline, I don't think this investment was worth it. I think they would be better just plowing dollars into digital, wherever that is. Jason: [18:42] Yeah, it's super interesting. You know, obviously for listeners that don't know, my salary gets paid by those Super Bowl ads. I work for a big ad agency for which I'm very grateful. But the lot of controversy around our water cooler the day after the show. That was a spin that you rarely see. And in one metric, it clearly had an impact. There was a lot more discussion about Temu than any other company on social media the day after the Super Bowl. So the Super Bowl ads triggered awareness and conversation. I think they were the second behind Verizon, which had Beyonce, right? And so there was a lot of talk on social media. It was not all positive. There was a lot of discussion on social media, but people that hated the team who had the first time they saw it because it was sort of by Super Bowl standards, not a very high production animated ad. I think they made it in-house and they, you know, ran it with much greater repetition than audiences are used to. So it generated a lot of conversation that didn't necessarily translate to sales, at least that we can measure in the short term. And so that that's going to be interesting long term case study about what what these kind of, you know, splashy big reach audiences can and can't can't do. Right. Michael: [20:00] You know, I don't, again, skis and getting over them. It just seems like the outcome for them at this point should be a little further down the funnel. And I don't see how advertising spend like that will marginally get someone, persuade someone to buy a team you that wasn't already going to. It seems, yeah, it was a lot and there was no really movement in our data, either in new signups or in sales. I think there's some other research out that downloads are trending downwards or slowing down as well. We don't have that data, but I was reading elsewhere. So I think, Scott, this is maybe more to your 2024 prediction that people are realizing this is wish and slowing. and becoming less enamored or falling out of it. Jason: [20:52] No, no, no, no. Scott's predictions cannot be right. Scot: [20:55] Wait, if I hear that, you're pre-anointing that I'm right. Is that you're here in March, you're saying I was right with my prediction. Man, I'm good. Michael: [21:04] I didn't want to pick a side here, but I think people might be falling out of love with it, although it's not because it's not wish, it's because they're out wishing wish. We can talk to it a little bit. But I think people just realize Teamio is managing to disrupt Wish. And we can talk to the brands that it's disrupting. That's just one of many. It's got higher retention, bigger scale than Wish. But it does have the same limits as Wish and that this deep discount model doesn't have the big household brands that people want when they're making those everyday purchases that are slightly bigger, like the Tides and Cloroxes or the recognizable alternatives. There are just some things you don't want to replace and you don't want to gamble on. I don't think anyone wants to spend a dollar on detergent and see what happens. It's just going to be tough for them to scale at some point. I think the question we should be asking is if they've reached that point yet. I'm not sure. The sales growth slowing suggests they could have. But in the meantime, they are actually taking a wrecking ball to several other brands. So just because total sales is slowing doesn't mean the disruptive effect is slowing. Scot: [22:22] Yeah, let's go, Jason. Jason: [22:51] Because Temu is buying so many ads and driving the price on all those auctions up. So don't know if it's moving the needle on consumer impact or not, but it for sure is having an impact on their competitors, at least in that regard. Michael: [23:04] So you're saying maybe their goal is to just suck all the oxygen out of the room? Jason: [23:08] I'm saying that's potentially an unintended positive benefit. Mm-hmm. Scot: [23:15] Yeah, and you've teed us up there. Who is, is it retailers or is it more brands? Who's getting impacted by this? And kind of embedded in this question is, do you have an idea of the categories? Like if we looked at that pie of the 50 billion GMV, is it largely electronics? Is it apparel? Like what are the big wedges inside of there? Michael: [23:35] Yeah, well, so the great part about transaction data, it's really good at looking at brand disruption, or I should say retail disruption by brand. Not great at looking at the categories. You know, I don't see what an individual breakout of a credit card receipt is. I'm just seeing where people are spending. So I think that's the question I'm more equipped to answer. In terms of impact, some of the folks you think of when you think of mass market and discount retailers like Five Below and Walmart, the ones that you immediately want to ask if they're being disrupted, they seem like they'd have the most overlap. They've been pretty untouched, actually. Part of its overlap, only 19% of Walmart and Amazon's customers have even tried TeamU. And that's about the same as the total percent of US households that have tried it. substantially the whole country has made a purchase at Walmart and Amazon. So they're just not as at risk, maybe on the margins. But what we're seeing, I guess, next step up with some risk is the dollar stores. Dollar General, they share about a quarter of their customers with TeamU. And if you look at Dollar General's customers spending at TeamU, it's up over 800% year to year from January 23 to 24. Obviously, a super small base and flat. at Dollar General itself. [24:54] And then those TeamU customers who aren't, or those Dollar General customers who aren't TeamU customers, they're spending slightly up at Dollar General. It suggests that there's some impact. Again, not the biggest that we've seen. So I'd say like dollar stores kind of marginally. [25:10] This is not as supported by data, but just putting the data point together that the TeamU customers are spending less and TeamU customers are richer, you could come to the conclusion that Dollar General role is losing out on richer customers looking for deals a little bit. Maybe they're popping in for something they really don't want to spend a lot of money on, like a party, something like that. That's where the sales that they're losing is. Which actually kind of takes us to the last and biggest impact. Wish and AliExpress, as well as all those hobby lobby party supplies, like Oriental Trading. So I'll start with Wish. Their customers are just fleeing. I think there's no better way to say it. 50% less spend on Wish in January 2024 than January 2023, and over 680% increase at TeamU. That's just astounding. The Wish customer, once they try I, TeamU, they're done. It's game over. It's similar for AliExpress. And I think that what TeamU has really done early on, we need to think of them less as like an Amazon killer, and more as a brand that just came in to consolidate the existing demand for this deep discount online spending that these two, AliExpress and Wish kind of got off the ground in the US. [26:35] In terms of the hobby space, Oriental Trading, Hobby Lobby, Party City, they all experienced double-digit declines year-on-year in February among the customers who also shopped at TMU. And these brands, they're catering to occasional and discount merchandise. I think they're really going to struggle adapting to TMU. It's like I said, the person who doesn't mind throwing away $5, $10, $15 on party supplies if they don't work out. But it's a one-time thing anyway. way you know it's it's things that they're somewhat disposable items to these customers and very interchangeable got. Scot: [27:12] It i noticed you didn't mention amazon on that list is there is it there been an amazon impact or has it been. Michael: [27:18] That's great good catch pretty negligible just just like walmart they're just brands on those platforms at this point that you can't find at at these places i think when i say on the margins that's what i mean there could be hey, I need this small thing for my kitchen that I could get for $1 or get for $3. And that might be the sale they lose out on, but they're doing a better job of being one-stop shops. And I think with what we've seen, it doesn't seem like the business model is set to take on Amazon yet. Scot: [27:57] Got it. Yeah. Jason: [28:00] You know, a couple of things that come to mind. A, I think the dollar store thing is super interesting because historically dollar stores haven't sold very much online. Like, and, and, you know, usually their excuse is that, that super low price point discounted items don't work online. Right. And I, I think like in some ways I look at Temu and I say, they're actually the digital dollar store that did figure it out. Now. [28:25] It remains to be seen whether they can make money doing it in the long run. But it doesn't surprise me that those are some of the categories that are being disproportionately impacted. And I think you really hit something interesting on some of these everyday essential retailers that sell the brands that consumers are looking for and trust. [28:46] That, to me, feels like a different shopping occasion than the shopping occasion I think Timo is winning. Branding there's this whole new trend on all the social media platforms called dupes and you know people think of like knockoffs and forgeries where you you try to pretend you're a brand that you're not but dupes is a something different dupes is this is a very similar product to a name brand product but it it overtly is not the name brand product and it's a way better value and they're now these big cohorts of consumers that talk about their dupes and brag about their dupe finds and, you know, proudly make these, these dupe decisions. And it feels like those are the kind of things where, where Teemu's playing really well, where, you know, you're into, you know, crafting and you've, you know, there's some expensive machine, a cricket machine for cutting vinyl. And you say, oh man, I found a dupe on Teemu for 20 bucks, right? Like those Those feel like the kinds of occasions they're winning when you're willing to trade down for that no-name product and take a gamble versus when you know you want the Tide dishwasher soap. Michael: [29:58] I think that's a great point. They're taking advantage of the trading down phenomenon in general right now that a lot of brands are seeing, a lot of retailers are seeing. This is the perfect spot. I'll just go ahead and see if Temu has it. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Scot: [30:15] Cool. One topic, and this is kind of a jump ball for you guys, is the, you know, I read a lot about this shipping model, and this was always Wish's kind of secret sauce is there's this, there's this like loophole in the postal code where if you send this something small, you know, it doesn't have any tariffs, number one. And then number two, there's like this really cheap postal rate, or I can't remember if China subsidizes it or it's free or we subsidize it, but there's some, there's kind of like double loopholes. There's a tariff one and a shipping one. And I've seen some noise lately about people wanting to kind of shut this down. Do you guys, either of you more expert on that than I am and have an opinion on if it's going to be sustainable or not? Jason: [30:57] I could certainly jump in there. So what you're talking about is there's this thing called the Global Postal Treaty. And it's a prearranged agreement between like 95 countries, 94 countries for how they'll deliver each other's mail. When you try to ship a letter from the U.S. to Germany, the U.S. Post Office is going to hand it to the German Post, and they need to know in advance how much the German Post is going to charge the U.S. Post Office to deliver that so that the U.S. Post Office can charge a rate in advance to you to deliver those things. So this global postal treaty is super valuable, and it makes it possible to cost effectively and, you know, with predictable rates, mail stuff all across the world. [31:41] Unfortunately, there's a couple of problems with it. There was the developed nations agreed that for less economically developed nations, they would have a preferred rate. So they would charge even less to deliver. The U.S. post office would charge less to deliver mail from a developing economy than they would from an established economy. And until recently, China was characterized as a developing economy, which is probably not accurate. And then the Postal Treaty specifies a dollar limit that it only is in effect for packages under a certain value. And so this is called the de minimis clause of the Postal Treaty. In the United States, the threshold is $800. So when Temu ships something to a consumer in the U.S. that costs under $800, they get a predetermined rate from the U.S. Post office, which is often cheaper than the rate to mail something from one part of the U.S. to the other. And Scott, per your point, there is no tariffs charged on that item and there is no import inspection on that item. So, you know, normally when we, you know, if a U.S. Retailer imports a container of goods from China, there's all kinds of inspections to make sure that the factory in China met labor standards and, you know, met environmental standards, and then they pay tariffs on all that. [33:08] The team who hands one package to the U.S. post office, they they get to bypass all that, which, you know, is, of course, controversial. No one wants to get rid of the Global Postal Treaty or even de minimis. But what they're saying is that the U.S.'s 800 hour threshold is probably way too high. Like China's threshold for reciprocation is something like forty dollars or something. So you could you could put a big dent in Temu if you just lowered the the threshold. And so there's There's, you know, noise in Congress about trying to change that limit. I would say that, you know, it is an unfair advantage in many ways, and U.S. Companies are certainly right to complain about that. [33:51] I would say that Temu is different than Wish. Wish took advantage of this cause. Temu takes advantage of it way more effectively, right? So Wish sold, you know, was a marketplace, and they had a factory sell something to an American consumer. And then it was up to the factory to get it to the American consumer. So the factory had to have their own postal account. And then they, you know, had to trigger this postal treaty. And there was no shipping confirmation. And often Wish products took a very long time to ship and a very long time to arrive. As part of this next-gen manufacturing model that Temu has, they do all that for the seller. And it uses Temu's postal account. And they expedite all of these things. Most of these goods get air freighted to the U.S. and put into the U.S. postal system. So while Wish items would have averaged three or four weeks delivery time. [34:46] Temu normally averages like five to seven days, and they almost always outperform their shipping promises. And in fact, they even have a guarantee. They give you $5 back if the package arrives late. So, you know, part of the reason that I don't think they're just purely Wish 2.0 is they actually do have a better, more reliable shipping experience than Wish. And they actually more effectively take advantage of this postal loophole than Wish ever did. Scot: [35:18] Yeah. And Wish took the proceeds of their IPO and built out some fulfillment centers. And they almost did their own version of that Amazon dragon boat or whatever that was called. Has T-Mood signaled they're going to do something like that where they have, you know, even more? Jason: [35:32] Yeah, they already have in some. So they're in 49 countries now. So they do have D.C. fulfillment centers in some of those countries. They've actually talked about opening a fulfillment center in Mexico for delivering goods in the western U.S. And so so they are talking about that. But then this other big thing is starting this week that a U.S. Seller could list their goods that, you know, the goods are already in a warehouse in the U.S. that US seller could list their goods on Temu and then deliver those goods from a US fulfillment center. So that's a potential way to get much faster delivery times for Temu. And we've already seen some badging. Temu has items with a rapid ship badge that are guaranteed for two-day delivery. So it does seem like Temu recognizes that over time, their fulfillment model is going to have to be more nuanced than just the the individual parcels uh coming one at a time but but you know that still seems like the the sort of biggest foundation of how they're delivering all these goods got. Michael: [36:36] It um the minimus though i can't imagine that much they would change would really have an impact we're seeing average ticket prices at 38 last month for for timmy like are they thinking thinking of reducing it by that much or. Jason: [36:52] So, I mean, a just talking about way over our skis, like my, my political acumen is very poor, but yeah, I don't think Congress is gonna do anything. I think like at most they'll have a, a hearing and try to look like tough guys talking about how unfair it is and how they're gonna try to protect the American businessman and the American consumer. And then when push comes to shove, they won't, they won't do anything, which is my, my cynical nature. But you're right. Right. Nobody's talking about dropping the de minimis low enough to to, you know, really trigger the bulk of these these Temu shipments. So it's it's more likely if they made a change, it would be a gesture, not like, you know, some some game changing thing. Now, you know, there's another big Chinese company out there, ByteDance, which is TikTok. And like there there is a bill going through Congress right now to ban TikTok. And so, you know, if something like that were to happen with, with a PDD or Temu, you know, that, that would of course, you know, be a, a big threat of a disruption. Scot: [37:54] Yep. And then on that example you gave, Jason, of a U.S. seller in a fulfillment center, is that Temu's fulfillment center or the seller's fulfillment center? Jason: [38:04] The seller's fulfillment center. So potentially what would be one of the ironies of this is, of course, as Amazon has expanded their fulfillment services, you could be an Amazon seller, be using FBA, and sell something on Temu and have Amazon fulfill it for you. Scot: [38:20] Yeah, Wish did something like this. What we found was the U.S. Seller struggled to get things in the price point that consumer wanted, right? It's like it's such this low quality stuff that almost has to be offshore for even to the manufacturer. Jason: [38:36] Yeah, I think you are 100 percent right there. I don't think they're going to like we don't know what the uptake is going to be on these U.S. Sellers. It's an interesting talking point, but it doesn't seem like there's going to be a bunch of U.S. Sellers that are going to likely participate in this like low price dupes demand that they have today. Now, what would be interesting, Pinduoduo, I mentioned, which is a huge, huge entity in China. Pinduoduo started with this same stuff. They started with really inexpensive marketplace goods. And as Pinduoduo got bigger and more established and won the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers, they moved up market. They started selling brand name stuff. They started selling higher quality stuff. And today they're a hybrid seller. PennDuoDuo in China sells their own goods in addition to marketplace items, which I've never seen before. Usually it always goes the other way. And so there's at least a premise that like maybe the U.S. sellers don't like add to the current assortment, but maybe the U.S. Sellers help Temu round out their assortment with some higher price point, you know, more recognizable goods for the U.S. consumer that helps them win more wallet share. Scot: [39:49] Interesting. Cool. We're running up against time. Do you guys have any other topics you want to hit before we call it a show? Michael: [39:58] No, I think it's fair. You know, I already mentioned one of your predictions. I should talk about the other one. Just to pick on Jason for a second. I don't think we'll make it to the 75% of target USC comm this year for Temu, Jason. Sorry. It's like a stretch. Scot: [40:17] Man. How do we get Michael on the show more? Like, I'm really enjoying this. This was a really good guess. Jason: [40:24] I feel like you're calling the winner of the Super Bowl in the first quarter, man. Come on. Michael: [40:27] Okay, well, I'll just put it this way. At 18% of the US households, three months into the year, it seems unlikely at their current growth that they get there. My view basically though, writing this, is that they've done a great job in the first year of attracting folks with a lot of disposable income to buy things that they likely wouldn't have bought anywhere else, like party supplies, household goods. It's maybe a different model than they they have in China. The challenge for them now, you guys both definitely identified this, that it's basically to convince people to switch everyday spending from Amazon and Walmart on those bigger items. And they don't have the assortment right now for that. And that's what you're mentioning. They need to either move up market or figure out what that assortment looks like. But that's going to be a bigger hurdle. They're reaching critical mass. They just have some decisions to make internally at this point. Jason: [41:17] Yeah. Well, in general, I feel like that is going to be a great place to leave it for this show because we have run out of our allotted time. But Michael, we really appreciated your insight. We'll certainly have you back. I know your view of the U.S. economy is useful for a whole bunch of topics that come up frequently on the show. But as always, if listeners enjoyed this episode, I hope you will jump on iTunes and leave us that five-star review. Scot: [41:46] Thanks, Michael. And this has been really good for Jason's ego. So I feel like you've knocked him down a couple of pegs. I appreciate that. And then if folks want to read more about your writing or connect with you, is LinkedIn the best place or are you more active on TikTok? Where can people find you? Yeah. Michael: [42:04] Michael Maloof on LinkedIn. I'm always posting a lot of Ernest data on there. And then also on our company blog, ErnestAnalytics.com. Go to the Insights blog and subscribe. Jason: [42:17] Yep. And I will put links to both the team new articles you guys published and your LinkedIn in the show notes. Michael: [42:23] Thank you. Jason: [42:24] Until next time, happy commercing!

Third season launch! A new and improved TAC Right Now returns with a breakdown of the Super Tuesday primary results. Host Bradley Devlin walks Helen, Jude, and Sumantra through the exit polls, the surprises, and the presidential rematch ahead. Picks of the week: Helen: "DoxyPEP Is a Disaster in Waiting," Theodore Dalrymple Jude: "McConnell, Man of His Era," W. James Antle III Sumantra: "Ursula von der Leyen's Second Term," Adriel Kasonta Bradley: "Sunset for Mitch McConnell—and Joe Biden?" Dan McCarthy

In his second year shooting pro, and his first-ever ASA Pro Pressure Point Shootdown, PSE shooter Brady Myers of Pennsylvania won the Open Pro division at the 2024 Hoyt/Easton Pro/Am in Foley, Ala. Brady runs through what it was like winning the event, beating legends of the game Levi Morgan, Dan McCarthy and Jack Wallace in the process. He also talks about his competition career - how he got started, lessons he learned along the way, and more. Listen in and meet Brady Myers!

Welcome to a special episode where we bring you an insightful recording from the Heritage Foundation. Join us as President and CEO of ISI, Johnny Burtka, takes the stage to present a compelling lecture on his latest book, "Gateway to Statesmanship."In this thought-provoking episode, Johnny Burtka explores the key themes and insights from his book, providing a gateway to a deeper understanding of statesmanship. Delve into the principles and perspectives that shape effective leadership and governance.Following the lecture, we transition to a dynamic panel discussion featuring Johnny Burtka, Elbridge Colby, and Dan McCarthy. These distinguished voices engage in a nuanced dialogue, offering diverse viewpoints on statesmanship, its relevance in contemporary politics, and the broader implications for our nation.This Heritage Foundation event provides you with a front-row seat to an enlightening exploration of leadership, governance, and the timeless principles that guide our nation.

Episode 188: Welcome Dan McCarthy In this episode we bring in college coach, Las Vegas native, and current student of ministry Dan McCarthy. Coaching for over 5 years, Dan brings a wealth of knowledge and curiosity everywhere he goes. Inspired by his faith, he believes that everything you do is determined by your effort, attitude, … Episode 188: Welcome Dan McCarthy Read More »

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The Jason & Scot Show.  Podcast about e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Editor note: We're trying some fun new AI features for this episode. The following show notes were written by ChatGPT. We're also let AI remove all the "stop words" in our audio, and we've switched from Google to OpenAI for our audio transcription. Let us know your feedback. In this episode of the Jason and Scot show, our special guest is Sean D. Nelson, the CEO and founder of Lovesac. He shares his inspiring journey of starting the company as a beanbag business in his basement and growing it into a successful public company. Sean highlights the key moments of his entrepreneurial journey, including winning a million dollars on Richard Branson's reality TV show and navigating the ups and downs of the business. Sean has upcoming book and podcast, both entitled "Let Me Save You 25 Years: Mistakes, Miracles, and Lessons from the Lovesac Story." Sean emphasizes the importance of being a direct-to-consumer brand and how Lovesac has found sustained success by focusing on customer acquisition costs and offering a high-quality product. He discusses the concept of direct-to-consumer and shares his thoughts on its significance. Sean believes that having a differentiated product that provides value to customers is crucial, rather than simply relying on an online sales strategy. The conversation also touches on the topic of innovation and how Lovesac has been able to push the boundaries of what a furniture company can offer. Sean discusses their Stealth Tech innovation, which incorporates surround sound into their couches, as well as their commitment to creating products that are built to last and designed to evolve. Sean acknowledges the challenges of operating in physical retail and highlights the importance of their showrooms in reducing customer acquisition costs and providing a hands-on experience for customers. He also mentions their partnerships with Best Buy and Costco to expand their reach. The discussion expands to the future of retail and e-commerce, with Sean mentioning the transformative role of AI but cautioning that it takes time for movements to fully evolve. He emphasizes the importance of being patient and keeping an eye on developments in the industry. The conversation concludes with Sean expressing his long-term commitment to Lovesac and his desire to build something meaningful rather than focusing solely on personal gain. Listeners are invited to check out Sean's podcast and website, as well as his upcoming book, which will be released in January. Overall, this episode provides insights into the journey and philosophy behind Lovesac's success and offers valuable perspectives on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the future of retail. Chapters 0:00:46 Introduction and Welcome to the Show 0:08:36 The Journey of Love Sack: From Highs to Lows 0:12:05 Love Sack's Traditional IPO and Company Performance 0:15:49 The Importance of Having a Differentiated Product 0:19:49 The Value and Overhype of Market Movements 0:23:18 Sactionals: Built to Last, Designed to Evolve 0:25:56 Driving a Movement for Sustainable Consumerism 0:31:36 Innovation and the Evolution of Lovesac's Product Line 0:37:07 The Strength of Lovesac's Physical Showrooms in the DTC Landscape 0:40:03 Testing and Learning: Mobile Concierge and Shop and Shop 0:41:52 AI's transformative role in the future of technology 0:50:08 Long-Term Vision vs Quick Profit Episode 313 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, November 9th, 2023. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show. This episode is being recorded on Thursday, November 9th, 2023. I'm your host, Jason "RetailGeek" Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and Scot show listeners. Jason, we're very fortunate to have a entrepreneur on the show. I'm the entrepreneur side of our partnership. So I always really enjoy these. Introduction and Welcome to the Show [0:49] We have on the show, Sean D. Nelson. He is the CEO and founder of Lovesack. And a little birdie told me that he recently started a podcast himself. He started Love Sack as a beanbag company in his basement when he was around 18. And now it's a public company and doing relatively large revenues over 600 kind of run rate. If I look at the last quarter, I took a little glance at that. Sean, welcome to the show. Shawn : [1:13] Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you. Jason: [1:16] We are thrilled to have you, Sean. Listeners always like to kind of get the background. I'm imagining you don't have a deep background before you started Love Sack because you started it so young. But can you, like where were you in life when that brought you to start build your own product? Shawn : [1:34] Yeah, strangely, 25 years in and still running the same company I founded as my side hustle in college, which is exactly what Love Sack was. So 95, all the way back then, I made a giant not bean bag because I thought it would be funny. I literally, 10 days out of high school, got off the couch at my parents' house, having this dumb idea, like, how about a beanbag, like, me to the TV, like, the whole floor, like, huge. Drove down to the fabric store, bought some fabric, brought it home, cut it out, and then began sewing it up, broke my mom's sewing machine, neighbor finished it, took three or four weeks to try and stuff it, originally with beads, but couldn't possibly find enough, so looked around the house, I just found out my parents' camping mattresses chopped up yellow foam, you know, like those yellow slabs of foam you take camping, on a paper cutter in the basement. And eventually, I mean, foam, packing peanuts, old blankets, had this thing stuffed and started using it out and about through university, taking it camping, back of the truck, driving movies. Ended up putting it away for a couple years. And by the way, everywhere I took it, everybody wants one. Like everyone's always like, Oh my gosh, what is that thing? Where'd you get it? I was like, I'll never make another one. It was such a pain in the butt and put it away for a couple of years to go be a missionary for my church. [2:58] And came back to finish up university in 1998. And that's when I founded the company. Cause people kept bugging me to make them one. And it became my side hustle in college. And we tried to sell these things eventually beyond our friends and family and beer fest, May fest, October fest, car shows, boat shows, 10 by 10 booths, how we got started. Tried to sell them to furniture stores and they laughed at us and told us it was a dumb idea. [3:34] Eventually, at a trade show got discovered by the limited to this is like, you would not today as justice like in the malls, like little girls pink and purple fuzzy stuff for their bedrooms and, and clothing. Anyway, they ordered 12,000 little love sacks, not knowing it was me and a buddy and like a woodchipper shredding foam in the back of this furniture place. And, and that forced us to source over in Asia, which is, you know, where I had served my mission. So I speak Mandarin Chinese. There's a whole story there I won't get into it it was just kind of one thing led to another led to another week we built a factory to support that 12,000 sack order we then went out to the furniture stores who again laughed at us didn't want our $500,000. [4:19] Beanbags having completed that order wanting to keep the factory going so we finally opened our own store in a mall that didn't even want us there but finally capitulated let us in because they We had a space to fill for the holiday season, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it just exploded. We did a good job, carpet paint, neon sign, made it look like a proper mall chain store selling giant beanbags, and it just took off. Like, it worked. People came in, flopped down, music bumpin', big screen TV, playin' movies, had a great time. There was a couch in the corner to look pretty, be part of the decor. People kept asking about the couch, And that led us to eventually, many stores later, many states later, invent Saxionals, which is our modular sofa solution, which now drives almost 90% of our sales today. So we're more a couch company by far today than we are a beanbag company. And there was a whole, listen, I'm skipping over decades of time really, but there was a whole transition where we... We went through after we invented the sectionals and solved all these problems people have with couches not only can you ship it to your house via FedEx which was hyper relevant you know for. [5:32] E-commerce and digital marketing obviously but it's watchable and changeable, and movable and it can be with you the rest of your life that that led us to a whole design philosophy that now. [5:42] Drives are innovation we think is a really cool secret sauce called design for life but. 10, 20, 50, 100, 250 locations now. We came public in 2018 on about 100 million in sales. Right around the time there was just tons of fervor in this direct consumer movement. We had farted around, we'll call it as a furniture store, selling rugs and lamps and bowls and baskets and all the obvious things along the way. And it was really when we purged all that stuff around 2015, seeing the Caspers of the world emerge and Warby Parker's and even Tesla with their showrooms. Could we adopt a more e-commerce-led model with showrooms for people to kick the tires, so to speak? And that transition is really what unlocked the lovesack that you see today and where most of our growth has come since about 2015, 16, when we made that pivot, took the company public, wrapped around that direct consumer story. So we're not a digitally native brand originally, we were actually a retailer that pivoted and became digitally led. And now we don't even operate stores in the traditional sense. We don't, we don't stock things there. You know, you don't walk out of there with your product. They're all really online sales and those showrooms are extremely powerful mechanisms for helping people make up their mind around a five or 10, $15,000. [7:06] Purchase where they want to see the thing and sit on it and, and, and see if it's everything it's cracked, it's cracked up to be online. And so we, we, we believe that we really, uh, through that arc. And then by the way, since coming public, I don't know, six, seven X, the company this year, you know, we'll, we'll be on a run rate to the analysts were a public company. So the analysts show us around, you know, it's called 700 plus in revenue and profitable, very profitable and cash generative. So we think, you know, the direct consumer game, in a lot of respects, Love Sack is one of the unlikely winners of that entire movement. Because I think at that scale, there are very, very few, what I call successful direct to consumer brands. And so we're really proud of that. And it's been a long saga, and we continue to grow and change and adapt and evolve. Jason: [8:01] It's an amazing story. And we definitely want to unpack it. But I want to go all the way back to the beginning for one second. Did that neighbor who helped finish sewing the first prototype get any equity? Shawn : [8:13] No, it was my ex-girlfriend's, mom, so about the time she exited, you know. No, it was just a friendly favor, but the truth is a lot of people helped out along the way, and a lot of people had equity or have equity in Love Sack from along the way, but look, we've been through every high, every low. Somewhere in the middle there, I skipped over it just because of brevity. Not only did I win a million dollars on TV with Richard Branson, The Journey of Love Sack: From Highs to Lows [8:38] his reality TV show on Fox Network back in 2005, if you can believe that, the rebel billionaire. But I also guided the company through a complete chapter 11 reorganization back in 2006, spearheaded by Venture Capital, which was painful and ugly and embarrassing and humiliating. So we've been through every kind of thing over these better than two decades. Scot: [9:01] Yeah, my deep dive question is, when you rented or bought the wood chipper, did you tell them you'd be throwing foam in there, or did they think you were clearing up a tree? Shawn : [9:09] Oh, that's so the original story. Yeah, the original woodchipper actually, you know, if you've ever used one in your backyard or, you know, you shove sticks into these things, that's basically what the original shredder was. And it was in the back room of this furniture factory already. They had used it back in the seventies to shred foam, but it had an electric motor, right? Instead of like, okay. Scot: [9:30] So it's okay to be inside here. Shawn : [9:32] Well, yeah, but I had to rehab it because it hadn't been used in like a decade or two because shredded foam had fallen out of favor in furniture. And then later to do that bigger order, we couldn't afford like a proper German, shredder, so we ended up driving out to farm country to find more of those same kind of shredders and actually found a hay grinder called a hay buster can shred 2000 pounds at a whack. Scot: [9:57] And that's a lot of power. Shawn : [9:59] Yeah, it's powered by a tractor. So we, you know, agricultural loan for tractor and hay grinder. I mean, crazy, crazy story in the beginning. Scot: [10:07] Yeah, as a family, you gotta figure out how to get it done, right? Whatever it takes. Shawn : [10:12] Whatever it takes. Scot: [10:13] I didn't know the Richard Branson thing, so that was interesting. Did he like, was he an active investor, or that's like one of those things where his people kind of take over and you never hear from him again? Shawn : [10:22] No, I mean, it was a weird situation. He had a reality TV show, 2004-5, The Rebel Billionaire, you know, whatever, 16 contestants. It was like The Apprentice, but not for apprentices, for entrepreneurs. So my runner-up on the show was Sarah Blakely of Spanx, gives you an idea. Scot: [10:38] Oh, okay, cool, neat. Shawn : [10:39] Yeah, yeah, so we became great friends, she and I, Richard and I. I ended up also being named President of Virgin Worldwide for a minute as part of the prize, believe it or not. So, worked with Richard, worked with all of his CEOs. Totally weird outcome. And, you know, but huge, huge blessing and a huge piece of story. And he was involved in sort of our VC round that ensued on the tail of that. Scot: [11:06] Okay, and then I think I saw that you guys were on Shark Tank, right? You were like one of those that you know, kind of one of the big success stories. Was that the OG Shark Tank or? Shawn : [11:16] No, we weren't on Shark Tank. A lot of people thought that. There was a Love Sack copycat that's on Shark Tank. Okay, and so they got... Scot: [11:23] I was confused because like Google says you were and then I was like, but then I couldn't find the episode. Jason: [11:28] There's a whole TikTok channel dedicated to Love Sack and Shark Tank and it's super weird. Shawn : [11:36] That's super, yeah, people get confused. Scot: [11:42] Yeah, yeah, super weird. Yeah. And then when you did your IPO, was it a traditional IPO or did you guys get caught up in the SPAC craziness? Shawn : [11:51] No, we did a traditional IPO back in 2018 and you know, our stock has been really volatile for lots of different reasons that, you know, COVID was crazy, but the company performance has been really solid. So we're just trucking. Love Sack's Traditional IPO and Company Performance Scot: [12:06] He, I think, was at Graham that said in the short-term it's an emotional machine, in the long-term it weighs your financials. So you got to, it's very hard, you know, I took a company public, not to the level you have. And yeah, it is, I was like, I'm not going to look at the stock, it's not going to influence me. And then suddenly everyone's like, are we making the quarter? And it's like, okay. And then suddenly it's very hard to get out of that, that short-term mindset. So congrats to you for sticking to it for so long. Shawn : [12:29] Yeah, look, I'm actually a big advocate of it, having lived inside of it now for almost six years. Scot: [12:36] Yeah, the transparency is good, you know, and I like that part of it, I think that's good for, you know, to kind of have to put out everything that you're doing, you know, it's a, the ultimate, yeah, it's like, yeah, transparency tends to be a good thing. Shawn : [12:48] I think it's the right way for companies to be governed and ran. Anyway, we could get into that if you want. Scot: [12:56] Yeah, I like the, you know, and you talked about all the other, we call them digitally native vertical brands, like the Warby's and Bonobos and all that. And yeah, a lot of them have not made it past kind of like that hundred million dollar level. And you guys have obviously, you know, six, seven X that, which is awesome. And then, you know, the big knock on Casper for a long time was as we've actually had this guy, Dan on the show, people were able to pick apart the CAC LTV and they found the average selling price was like, Jason will know these numbers, but it was like 350 and their cost to acquire a customer was 400. And they were like, you know, that obviously wasn't sustainable. So it's pretty neat that you guys have figured that out. Shawn : [13:36] Yeah. I mean, that's at the root of why obviously we've had some sustained success. And I think it's also at the root of why there are almost no other direct consumer brands making any money. End of story, full stop. And it's pretty fascinating to watch the whole thing unfold, because it really has been a movement for almost a decade. Scot: [14:01] Yeah, and I don't want to dig into the information you don't divulge publicly, so this is not a trap or anything but is it because the selection or your products, you've kind of cracked the code on Kakao TV, like what do you, and I don't want to know any methods or anything. and what do you attribute it to? Shawn : [14:18] Look, I think, let's start at the root. I think that many companies, product companies, let's start there, overlook the fact that you need a really good product. I think they pick a category and they say, oh, it could be a direct consumer brand. And the truth is, what does that even mean? Do you mean, because here's the funny thing. When I hear analysts and industry people talk about direct consumer, it has become synonymous over the last decade as it's unfolded today with e-comm. Oh, you mean you're an e-comm company and in many cases you do half of your sales through wholesale. So what does it even mean? I mean, if you want to talk about a direct consumer brand, LoveSack may be the most direct. We don't have any wholesale. I'm talking zero, and we only sell through our own channels, whether it's our website or our showrooms. And we have these partnerships, for instance, where we operate our own showrooms inside of a Best Buy or a Costco. [15:26] But you know, so this whole phrase even, direct-to-consumer, I think is really kind of silly. You mean you're a company that sells stuff online and maybe in showrooms and maybe in wholesale? So you're a company that sells stuff. So let's start with stuff. And you have to make, I think, if you want to be successful in the world, it's not a new concept. You have to have... A great product or or you have to have some other really. Hiller efficiency The Importance of Having a Differentiated Product [15:52] and i think what most have discovered it was a list again over this long decade of direction sumer evolution is that without a really differentiated product. You're just another company with a clever name lots of funding and if you throw lots of money at anything it's gonna grow. But you need to be differentiated. So Love Sack, you know, start with the giant beanbags. They were unique, especially in their day. There's tons of copycats out there now. [16:24] Sactionals are extremely unique. The problem is they photograph just like any other sectional sofa. Like if you took an image of Sactionals and an image of one of, you know, out of any competitor that sells couches, ours looks a lot like theirs. But the difference, the differences are myriad in terms of their washability, changeability, quality, and modularity, and many of those aspects, especially on the modular side, are patented at LoveSac. And so once you dig into it, you find that that's the number one driving factor, is we have a product that's truly differentiated, truly gives more value to the customer, and therefore, we can extract more from the market. It's really that simple, right? And that's at the root of why our CLV to CAC ratio it was so high and sustainable and cash-generative and profitable. And then we could go down all kinds of other paths. We could talk about our website, execution and stuff like that. And all of it needs to be there. Look, running a business is multifaceted and difficult. But at the root of it is that. Jason: [17:27] For sure. One of the things I sort of admire about your company is the original premise was not to have a particular go-to-market strategy. It was to have this great product that people wanted to have in their lives, right? And it feels to me like that, the whole quote unquote D to C movement, like this notion that before you solve any other problem, you're just gonna put a flag in the ground, like this is how you're gonna go to market, that just, it just seems silly because that may not be how the customer wants to acquire your product. Shawn : [18:00] Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that, so I think that whole movement that we're a part of, so I don't mean to like bag on the movement. I'm just an observer as well. Like I've been living in it, right? And we put, and I'm being really transparent, we put on those clothes very intentionally. [18:16] Because people that planted those flags were getting funded. People that planted those flags were being understood at the time. And these movements come. Right now, I could hold up a flag that said AI on it and go out there and raise a bunch of money and do something. And in the end, 99 out of 100 of those, flags are going to fall by the wayside after having tons of money thrown at them and Probably 1% of them will go on to you know be the next Googlers or who knows what right? But these movements come and go and and and I'm and this is what I'm saying You gotta be careful. I'm not bagging on the movement because these movements are useful these movements drive economic activity these movements drive innovation But they're often way overhyped, not as, I think, not as, so, you know, I mean, we could get into AI, you guys are, I'm sure, tracking it just like I am. What does that even mean? Oh, you mean like software? You mean like software that, that does stuff in an automated fashion? Like is that, is that, is it really that new? But it doesn't matter. It's a story that's being heard. It's a story that's being understood and it's where the momentum is. And so if you're able to wield, take advantage of these movements in the marketplace to your end, that's what, and that's exactly what LoveSack did. We put on those clothes, we took a concept that had been around for a long time, our concept. [19:42] And look, in the end, the thinking and the development and even like, let's say the web services and all the things available to that movement that The Value and Overhype of Market Movements [19:49] were spun up because of that movement, we benefited from. The money raising pricing aside, momentum, going public, whatever, all these things aside. So that's why I'm saying I think that there is value in these movements, but fundamentally, you still need to have a great business, a great product, something that's truly differentiated, because anyone with some funding can go out, buy a logo, buy a name, and look like they know what they're doing. Jason: [20:20] And yeah, for sure. And to your point, there's a, there's a funny data by going around in, in our industry this week that like over a hundred million dollars or I'm sorry, Amazon's GMV is, I'm sorry, a hundred billion dollars of Amazon's GMV is from AI. And you hear that and you're like, oh my God, that's huge. And then you find out it's product recommendation tiles that they launched in 1997. Shawn : [20:45] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jason: [20:47] Which, yeah. Yeah, so I do just want to like kind of wrap up this section, but put it in context. When you open that first store in a mall, like the mall competition for furniture stores was like Expressions Furniture, right? Which no one on this call would even remember probably. And then like by the time you really, after your IPO and really caught fire, you were competing directly against all these D to C companies that were expanding in malls. You were probably competing for leases. Shawn : [21:18] Yeah. Jason: [21:19] It's quite the, quite the journey. Now, Scot mentioned at the beginning of the show that you had recently started a podcast and I'm two part question. How the heck did you have time to start a podcast and tell us what the premise behind the podcast is and what you're talking about? Shawn : [21:36] Sure. Yeah. Just to comment first on what you pointed out, there is this whole strip in the malls now out there right now. But by the way, in these shopping malls that I was told were dead, you know, I could read the headlines of shopping malls are dead back in 2001 when I was opening my first shopping mall and I was forwarded those kind of emails by friends and family who were concerned. And here we are in 2023 and while these things change, they take decades to change. Meanwhile, they've evolved and you have all of these direct consumer players now and it It just cycles through, you know? What the players inside of these shopping centers happen to rotate, and I've watched it all evolve, and by the way, they're rotating again, because a lot of those players are not viable. Some of the best ones, biggest ones, you know? Like, concepts like Peloton, who I think is amazing as a concept, you know? They have their struggles, and so we watch these things evolve. In terms of, the podcast is relevant to this. Let me explain why. We had the chicken, I'm going to go, given the nature of what your podcast is, I'll give you a much broader picture than just, hey, why am I recording a podcast on my own and writing a book? [22:55] It works like this. We had the chicken before the egg. Sactionals being the chicken, we discovered, as we observed and had success with it, we believe are so successful because they are are built to last a lifetime and designed to evolve. Like those two attributes in our product are quite unique. And those two attributes underpin what we call our designed for life philosophy. Sactionals: Built to Last, Designed to Evolve [23:21] I did not found Love Sack to make products that are super sustainable, sustain hyphenable. In other words, things that actually sustain. Who's talking about that? I was just trying to survive. I made a big beanbag, people liked it. Made a couch because people were asking about couches. who has solved all these problems, observed the success, and that success was rooted in the fact that things were built to last, designed to evolve. Now that's led us to this whole philosophy that will inform our innovation on every product going forward, and it's why I'm so confident that we can continue to succeed, is because of this design philosophy that I'm sharing with you openly. Because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to execute to it. That's the hard part. It's the execution that's the hard part, you know? Now, that said... [24:08] I'm trying to drive a movement. I believe that there are many people that are sort of aware now that we have been conned into buying too much crap. New season, new collection, the merchandising hamster wheel, new iPhone, now it's got a titanium band. Really? Everyone knows. No, it's not even hidden. It's not even like a secret. it. This whole hamster wheel called planned obsolescence that was not an accident, it's absolutely an economic strategy to lift us out of the Great Depression and onward. And it has roots all the way back to Louis XIV. What's my point? The world has just, I guess, accidentally, not so accidentally, fallen into all kinds of rhythms that are unhealthy, unsustainable, and not good for anyone, not good for the environment, not good for people, you know, we're frenetically chasing out. Now my jeans are too tight, now they're too loose, now they're too long, now they're short, now I got, now they got to show my ankles, now they got to drape over my, like, this is not an accident. This is a self-propelling machine that we have created. What's my point? I believe we can drive a movement amongst people to reject that. And I believe factionals is one of the embodiments of that. Things built to last a lifetime are designed to evolve. So that movement is actually my long-term strategy. [25:33] In the near term, I need to... One of the ways that we will reach people besides buying advertising and using it to drive a strong CLV to CAC ratio is through... I don't know, even podcasts like this is through people finding our brand, finding out about me, finding out about the company through... Whether it be me, whether it be through the goodwill of our customers, sharing this or that, the other. And so I wrote a book called Let Me Save You 25 Years. It's our clever story Driving a Movement for Sustainable Consumerism [25:59] at Love Sack. It's really great. I think it launches in January. I spun up a podcast called Let Me Save You 25 Years where I share my own entrepreneurial mistakes, miracles, and lessons of the Love Sack story. That's the subtitle of the book. That's the spirit of the podcast. I talk to successful people, some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and successful people about these concepts. And it's not an interview podcast. We go really deep into some of these concepts. So my long-term goal ultimately, is to write another book that can help drive this consumer movement that I'm describing because I think if we can get a little bit of luck and get people thinking about these things and then eventually seeking out. Products that can do this, and just a lifestyle that is supported in the way that I'm describing. Buy better to buy less. Buy better stuff so you can buy less stuff. Well, obviously, LoveSack will benefit from that as a company that makes better stuff. And so, look, it's a long, long, long, long way around, but you asked the question, and I'm totally serious about that. Scot: [26:58] Yeah. So I'm gonna guess you're not a fan of fast fashion. Shawn : [27:03] No, I mean, that's obviously gonna be I made the topic of the book, you know? Scot: [27:06] And I'm not. Jason's a huge Xi'an fan, so you just really hurt his feelings. No, I'm just kidding. Jason: [27:11] Hey, I wore a Patagonia, a used Patagonia jacket in honor of tonight's show. What are you talking about? Shawn : [27:18] You are speaking my language, man. And look, it's not even about being a tree hugger. I think that people have a brain. And people, I think, are waking up to the idea after the iPhone 15, that holy crap, Apple probably should have been forced to innovate a long, long time ago. Biggest company on planet Earth because they sell us the same thing every year or two. Had we not allowed them to do that, they would have had to use their enormous treasure and enormous skill base to innovate into other categories and and change the world. Instead, we've allowed them to sell us the same thing every year. Scot: [28:06] That's an interesting ethos. Having built a company, about how many people are in your company at this point? Shawn : [28:12] Total about 1,500. It's about 400 at the headquarters and another 1,000 out in the field-ish. Scot: [28:19] Yeah, you're at that phase where there's people at the company that you've never really met before. And it's awkward because they always expect you to know their name and they all know your name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you get a company to that scale, how do you keep innovating? And, you know, one of the ones that I really love that you guys have done is the Stealth Tech. I think that's genius because I love AV and like having a really immersive experience. And I'll let you explain what it is, but, you know, my wife hates the big black speakers that I try to put all over the house. So I think it kind of solves like six problems in one. So A, maybe let listeners know a little bit more about what we're talking about. And then be I'd love to hear like how do you guys you know it's really hard to kind of you know ideas are easy and execution is hard on execution. It's really hard to like you know nail what you're doing and you have a lot going on and then like keep innovating. How do you how do you like get the org functional that way? Shawn : [29:16] Yeah. I mean, I think number one is you have to, you have to really want it, you know, not, not just like, Hey, I want to, I want to get, I want to get more business. I want to sell more stuff. Obviously there's that. But this ethos that I just kind of unpacked for you that, that we tripped stumbled into does the design for life ethos animates this organization. Like, it is a lot of, it is very motivating to think about, holy cow, now that we know our purpose, and it's been identified, right? Inspiring humankind to buy better so they can buy, you know, everyone's like, it was purpose, purpose, purpose, and hire some consultant, you know what I mean? But for real, if you have something that's truly unique, and it's meaningful, it's not just like words on the wall, it really is motivating, it's exciting. Scot: [30:11] And you bake baked in the products have to get better too, right? Like you, that's not well, so you have to support it. Shawn : [30:17] That's exactly right. Like, yeah, like we have to make stuff that's built to last a lifetime and design to evolve, which is really hard because if it was easy, everyone would do that. And here I am telling you openly about it. Like that's what we're going to do. And I'm not afraid to tell you because most companies won't do it because it's just freaking hard. Like it's a lot easier. Like why doesn't love sack? You know, you brought up stealth tech. So Stealth Tech is full Harman Kardon surround sound, no quality sound loss audio. Perfect audio emanating from your couch through the phone through the next layer of fabric and through the decorative layer of fabric that's washable, changeable, removable, tuned down to the color of that fabric so that the audio is perfect rear, front, center, subwoofer, invisible, beautiful, because you don't see it, it looks just like a couch, and it has all that packed in there, it's radically successful. It's been, it's now a huge piece of our business. And nobody saw that coming, because what would they expect a couch company to do next? A couch beanbag company. An end table, a coffee table, a rug, a lamp, you know, decorative accessories, get into the bedroom, who knows, right? Like the obvious stuff. Scot: [31:32] Meatballs. Shawn : [31:32] And what, yeah, right? Why did we do that? We anyway, we saw the opportunity and we also invented it. So one is, Innovation and the Evolution of LoveSack's Product Line [31:40] to answer your question, a lot of play. We are constantly at our innovation lab playing. So it's not just consumer-led insights, which is a big piece of what we do, but it's also a lot of inventions. You gotta have teams to invent. You gotta have engineers. You gotta have, so you gotta support that. So there's a cost structure there. And that's why LoveSack is quite profitable, but not as profitable as it could be in the future, because we are investing in innovation. And there's a lot of heads. there's a lot of engineers, there's a lot of designers doing things. Now they're not just all running around playing, they also have a very disciplined approach to executing on innovation, like launching Stealth Tech a couple years ago, and bringing that to market, which is a heavy lift because it's our invention, it's our patents, and it was not easy for this beanbag company to get into home electronics in a real way. [32:29] We've done, I think, more than 100 million in home electronic sales and making us a pretty, a pretty big player in that space, believe it or not. Already, and I don't think most people even, you know, would think that. But we're, you know, totally serious about it. So, innovation, wrapped around an inspiring path to innovation, I think is the key. Do you have an inspiring path, or are you just trying to make more stuff? Because if I wanted all those things I mentioned, like I'm over here in Asia right now, I'm in Hong Kong. And if I wanted a whole line of living room furniture with our logo on it to make myself feel good, I could have it in four weeks. The suppliers will do it for me. They've been doing it for 30 years over here for all the biggest brands you can think of, you know? And we could give them some designs and give them some ideas and let our, I mean, it's so easy to just source stuff. I'm talking about, you know, product land. Now we're talking fashion, talking furniture, talk any category you want, the same is true. But to truly invent stuff's a lot harder. And that's why I think we've had success, that's why I think we will continue to have success. Jason: [33:35] Yeah, you know, so I am interested, I mean, obviously the product has to be the lead in solving that real problem for a customer. But I do think another helpful aspect to your business is that in order for those products to be successful, like, they have to be demonstrated somehow. Like, per your point, the catalog for the StealthTech sectional looks just like the catalog for a generic sectional. And so I'm thinking you having your own showrooms was a big advantage for being able to tell the story. And ironically, I'm not sure you opened that first showroom because you recognize that problem. It sounds like you opened that first showroom because you had no other way to get distribution. Shawn : [34:21] Oh yeah, yeah. And that's why I'm not taking any claim as some kind of marketing genius. We just kind of tried to survive in the beginning. And opening a showroom was actually a reaction to being rejected by the big furniture guys, because they didn't, you know, want our product, they didn't believe in us, whatever. They couldn't see it. And so thankfully, it went that way. And by the way, they weren't showrooms, they were stores. We were a furniture store for a decade and a half. And we did all the furniture store things. And we sold merchandise, and you pulled your car around and we loaded you up, believe it or not, or we shipped to you. And it took us a long, long time to, after copycatting all those furniture stores and hiring merchandisers and window dressers and all those kinds of things from our competition to do that stuff in our stores. [35:14] To make that pivot to the direct consumer model that we operate on today that obviously looks very prescient in today's model. Now, the reason I think we've been so successful at it is because we had those 15, 20 years to get really good at operating now 250 locations across every state, almost in the United States of America, where people are fighting and bickering and hiring and firing and touching each other, whatever it takes. The point is operating physical showrooms is not something you get good at in a day or a week or a year just because that seems like the next thing to do. We have a website, now people need to see our stuff, to your point. And that's the approach I think a lot of the direct consumer brands have taken. And I don't think that they realize how hard it is to be profitable at retail and how many pitfalls there are. Where if I want to get a little better at digital marketing, which I think we're pretty good at now, but I can hire that. I can agency that, I can platform that. And so I think that the physical side of things is really underestimated. And so thankfully, our very long haphazard history has played out in our favor in that realm. And I think it's a huge strength of ours, because by the way, now that the economy's pulling back and this and that, we're 250 locations ahead of most that are just really coming around to the marriage of physical with digital and not realizing that, You know, it's not something you can just turn on and be good at. Jason: [36:44] Yeah. And I think it's you, you rightly pointed out that like the whole landscape of DTC hasn't been particularly successful. There's not a lot of wins, but the, the people that are outperforming the average, even one thing they all have in common is they all have some kind of physical footprint to, to reduce CAC, right? So they're either have their own stores or they, they are white selling through wholesale, or they're, they're in front of customers in some way, The Strength of LoveSack's Physical Showrooms in the DTC Landscape [37:09] other than, than Facebook ads. Yeah, I, I did. I think there's a super interesting new evolution. I thought I read about though. So like Amen stores and showrooms are super complicated. People wildly underestimate how many mistakes you can, you can make owning and operating a retail store. And now, now that you seem to have that clicking, you guys are bringing the retail store to the customer's driveways. Is that true? Like talk to us about the mobile concierge. Shawn : [37:37] Yeah, so just like we're innovating in product, we're also always innovating go to market. So whether it's mobile concierge, which is a lovesack trucks, where you can, you know, from the comfort of your home, have us pull up in the driveway and show you our products, which we've which we've dabbled in, and have tested into. And we'll see, you know, where that goes. I think that that has its own just like retail has its own complications, but also more, I think, more. I guess scalable already is Shop and Shop. So our showrooms right now in shopping malls, they're only like 800 square feet. So obviously the metrics are great, right? We're selling very big ticket items out of very tiny footprints with a small staff. There's just good metrics. And I don't hide from that. That's been a big part of our success, right? So we chose a good category in that way. We chose a terrible category in the sense is that the home category has all kinds of other issues. Jason: [38:38] Not the easiest category to deliver the product. Shawn : [38:41] Yeah, I mean, there's delivery, but there's also just the cyclical nature. You couple that with the idea that, look, we are selling you something that we are intending you to have for decades. My sectionals in my home are 16 years old, some of them, made with brand new pieces, made with Stealth Tech. That's pretty cool. On the other hand, unless we give you Stealth Tech and other reasons to come back, like, you know, you've got your satchels and you've made your investment. And so look, we deal with cover. So we're innovating on product, we're innovating on go to market, shop and shop. So these thousand square foot showrooms have been very useful for us. We have 200 square foot showrooms inside of Best Buy's or Costco's, where our people are basically checking you out and allowing you to kick the tires on the product. And then look, whether you buy there or whether you go back and buy online, we don't care. We built an agnostic platform where we just want you to be in the family. So I think these are things that have evolved over time and you've got to test and learn, whether it's mobile concierge, as you described, whether it's shop and shops. And these tests and learn activities can take years to play out and really take to scale and stuff like that. And so I think in this day and age of, hey, I'm gonna go raise a ton of money and build my company to X revenue and exit for X multiple, which is I think Testing and Learning: Mobile Concierge and Shop and Shop [40:05] what drives a lot of entrepreneurial activity. [40:09] That kind of mentality just doesn't have the staying power necessary. And that's why you see so many of these brands reach a point where they have to be retooled, like some of them are going through now. And look, they've made someone rich. Sometimes these founders find ways to squeeze a bunch of money out of it, or private equity tosses the hot potato to the next guy and they make a ton of money out of it. But in the end, what's left? a brand that is at scale, doesn't make money, and can't go anywhere. So my point is you gotta have the stomach to grind it out, to spend the time, to really slow cook some of these things, and to be flexible when they don't work, and shut them down and move on to the next. And so constantly innovating on go-to-market, constantly innovating on product, and really putting in the time and energy it takes to refine concepts, you know. Scot: [41:03] I know we're running up against time, and you've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this. I know your goal is to bring this ethos out, but if you think about retail and e-commerce, what do you think the next five years hold? You talked about AI. There's a lot of this stuff that's temporal, but anything you think that you believe is going to change the way we shop and buy, either in-store or online? Shawn : [41:29] Yeah, look, I think that it will just continue to evolve, and so I think AI is real. I think it will play a transformative role, and I think everyone's trying to figure out exactly what that is, and nobody really knows yet. I wish I could just give you a clever answer, but I think I've witnessed, AI's transformative role in the future of technology [41:53] you know, that's What's the benefit of having a 25-year perspective is it's like I was saying about shopping malls. The mall is dead, headline from 2001. TV is dead, headline from 2008. Here we are with both of them still intact. By the way, TV advertising is still a big piece of our marketing spend. I know that's kind of mind-blowing because it seems like everybody's cut the cord or gone to this extreme. And I'm just telling you, these movements take decades. And so while it's great to be ahead of a movement, you don't, unless you are trying to drive that movement, like unless you are trying to take advantage of that AI, boom, to go raise money and wave that flag or whatever. [42:40] I've found it's okay to be a laggard. It's not always beneficial to, unless you're trying to build your concept around that and take advantage of that movement itself, let the movements evolve. So I can't give you a great prediction of exactly what's going to happen. AI is important. But how, where the winners will actually be and what the effects will actually be, I think it's way too early to tell. But I do think it's important to keep your finger and keep watching and eventually, you know, to find the connection and lean into that to affect your business. You have to be a little bit patient, I think. Jason: [43:27] Yeah, well, certainly 25 years in, I think you've earned your patience creds, by the way. Shawn : [43:35] Maybe too much. Jason: [43:37] Yeah, I mean, there's pros and cons to both. Urgency can be useful in certain circumstances, but short time horizons come with a lot of problems, as you have rightly pointed out. That did lead me to one sort of thought question. And you, you referenced some of your, your CAC economics and side note, we've, we've one of the, our favorite guests on the show is this professor Dan McCarthy. Who's, who's a huge advocate for cohort analysis and customer lifetime value based businesses. And so he would be thrilled that you're on, because I know you guys disclose some of your cohort metrics in, in your financial statements, which he loves. And to me, you're in a really interesting category to do that because although your product has invented a reason for customers to come back and you've sort of turned a product into a system, it's not like a fast cycle, right? Like, and so like when you're thinking about like a time horizon for LTV, and you guys have a very good return on your CAC, but compared to most companies, your CAC still is really high, right? Like, you sell a lot of product to compensate for that. Shawn : [44:57] Yeah. Jason: [44:58] So how, like, you know, you're spending five or six hundred bucks to acquire a customer and then you're earning thousands of dollars on each of those customers. Like, was it difficult to sort of have the financial discipline to have a long enough time horizon to see those sorts of high CLVs come back for that initial customer acquisition? Shawn : [45:23] Yeah, I mean, you could call it discipline. In our case, again, it was just survival, being really transparent. You know, we were just trying to find a way to make this business work, and we weren't profitable right out of the gate. It took us many years to get better at retail, to get better at e-commerce, to have a shopping cart experience that was commensurate to the product, because that's really hard with our product. Our product is really weird and complicated. And so that's something that's overlooked with Lovesack. And I think a lot of our copycats and competitors are realizing that. You can't just use a Shopify checkout if you're going to sell something as dynamic as, let's say, factionals where, you know, you can buy a bunch of these and a bunch of those and combine them in a million different ways. How do you, how do you shopping cart that? How do you Amazon that, you know? And so, and so these are superpowers that we've developed over a long time and thankfully given it enough time to become profitable. So to answer your question about, you know, patience, I think part of it is just been our lot in life to, to be, to have patience forced on us. But secondly, real discipline around. [46:32] Our CLV and CAC metrics. So we are, we are, and have been for a long time, carefully monitoring them, tracking them, constantly innovating and refining on the marketing side, these things that I mentioned, whether TV, you know, over the top, linear, nonlinear, digital marketing with its 500 heads, you know, like I'm talking about species of digital marketing, it's such a big word, right? I have to be constantly and tirelessly refined and risk taken and stuff tried and stuff failed and all rolled it and it all rolls up into that CLV to CAC ratio that you can hope you can keep moving and then couple that with innovation so that people can come back and buy more. And so thankfully, look, we chose a category with a high ticket and that drives the lion's share. That first purchase drives the lion's share of that CLV to CAC relationship. But our long-term point of view now is not only to find other ways that we can do more of that, maybe even in other categories and adjacencies. [47:32] But also give like StealthTack, give people a reason to come back and add on. And then by the way, when they do come back, then they face the consequence of, well, what do I do with some of these things that I need to, let's say, I get StealthTack and I got to swap out two of my sides. Well, okay, the obvious answer is I don't want to throw those in the trash. We don't want them throwing them in the trash and they may not need another couch in another room. So it's leading us to services, trade in, trade up, recycle, you know, all kinds of things that will again, give us more reasons to reach out and touch that customer. And so I think that if you relentlessly pursue. [48:13] A good concept with good intentions being driven by good philosophy and purpose like I've described, it's been my experience that the universe kind of unfolds for you, but it doesn't do it overnight. And you can't just have a, at least in my experience, you can't just have a master plan and be like, we're gonna do this and then that and that. You have to iterate to it. You have to observe, you have to live some, like when we launched Stealth Tech, we just, you know, it's easy now to look back in hindsight and be like, well, of course people are gonna want to or trade in their sides or do whatever. But some of those things aren't always so apparent. And you need to plunge yourself into the pool, see what comes of it, and then react to that. And some of those reactions can take years to unfold. Like some of these services that I just described and whatnot, they'll take us years to manifest. [48:59] But the nice thing is, the core business can generate profits that will carry us to that and we'll invest some of those profits in that innovation that I'm describing. But it's like, it's just relentless, man. It's tiring. It's like you have to have the stomach to go the distance. And that's where the time horizon, look, I'm a big advocate of it. Culturally, you know, like when my whole organization knows, like the theme of our manager fest a month ago, this is where we all get together once a year, was 25 and 25 more. And I'm not kidding. Like my personal point of view, if I'm allowed to be here as a public company CEO, if I do good enough to stay in the seat, which is inherent, and that's why I love the structure. It forces you to be awesome, you know? [49:45] If I can do that, but the fact that my organization knows that I'm in for another 25, you know how grounding that is and stabilizing that is, as opposed to, man, when's Sean's gonna sell his stock and bail and go start his next company? That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? That's how I become a bazillionaire, isn't it? I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in building something. And I think that that, I don't know, desire is actually kind of rare these days. Long-Term Vision vs Quick Profit [50:14] I think everyone just wants to be a bazillionaire as fast as they can. Jason: [50:17] Oh, for sure. Yeah. Everybody's assuming you're going to cash out and invest in your first rocket. Shawn : [50:24] Yeah, whatever. And I think it's sad. Look, I'd love to make a ton of money, whatever. That's all great. But whatever happened to the ambition of let's build something awesome, no matter how long it takes. And that's where I'm at. Jason: [50:41] Yeah. Well, Sean, it's been an amazing run so far. This is going to be a great spot to leave it because we have used up our allotted time, but I know listeners are going to appreciate you saving them the first 25 years, and we're going to be super excited to watch what happens in the next 25. Shawn : [50:57] Thank you. Thank you. Scot: [50:59] We really appreciate it, Sean. I know you're in Hong Kong, you're in the middle of your day there, and we appreciate you coming on the show. If folks want to check out your podcast, where would you point them to? Shawn : [51:09] Yeah, wherever you love listening to podcasts, Let Me Save You 25 Years is the name. LetMeSaveYou25Years.com. You can find me on social media, Sean of Lovesack. I'm all over that and love to be connected, slide into my DMs. I mean, I love talking to customers, friends, peers, being very accessible and looking forward to building the movement. Of course, Lovesack.com. We're easy to find. Scot: [51:33] Trey Lockerbie 41 Yep. And the book's coming out in January and I assume it's going to be in all the usual places. Shawn : [51:37] Sean O'Toole 41 All the usual places. Yeah. Let Awesome. Jason: [51:45] Thanks again and until next time, happy commercing!  

Dan McCarthy, vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and editor of Modern Age, joins us to discuss a wide array of issues: how the Middle East affects the dynamics within the Democratic and Republican parties, the likely outcome of the DeSantis/Newsom debate, the issues that are hurting Joe Biden the most, and plenty more.

EP309 - Instacart IPO Filing  Warning: Given the complexity and breadth of topics, this is a longer than usual episode with a runtime of 90 minutes (if we had more time, we'd produce a shorter podcast). Update: In this episode Jason mentioned that he didn't think Instacart accepted SNAP payments. It turns out that Instacart did start accepting SNAP earlier this month. On Friday, August 25th 2023 Instacart filled its S-1 IPO form with the SEC, in advance of its intention to make an initial public offering. The complete filing is almost 400 pages. In this episode we summarize all the key points, including a number of surprises, in the filing. If you want to follow along with the actual S-1, you can download it here. Scot suggests you focus on pages 101-124. Topics Covered: Cover Page and Entry Level Items Overall Growth Trends 25:50 Unit economics 42:90 Cohort Analysis 48:10 Instacart Ads 56:30 The Big Risk/Concern 1:00:11 Other observations (Instacart+, Carrot Services, Generative AI) 1:22:50 Other episodes mentioned: Episode 255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire and Episode 224 Customer Cohort Analysis and CLV with Dr. Daniel McCarthy. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 309 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, August 29, 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. Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 309 being recorded on Tuesday August 29th I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners. We are going to jump into the talk tonight because one of our most popular shows as you know Jason the format is a deep dive and we have got a great Deep dive for you guys this episode. Last Friday August 25th there was a very big event not only in our favorite world's grocery which is Jason's favorite world and my favorite world of e-commerce and then Jason's favorite world of. But also in my favorite world of startups so this is this is a pretty big event and we wanted to dedicate a complete episode to it. I mean it is the filing of the S14 instacart. [1:24] And just to set it up the you know in my world of start-up land it has been very hard to get an IPO done so there's been a couple post coated and like late 2020. And then summon 21 and then there's been a dry spell there's been something called a dese back so you have this spec which is this. [1:44] Special-purpose acquisition thing and you can kind of go public through this kind of complicated convoluted thing. Tends not to go very well so there's been some of that like in My World Mobility there is one called get around and there's been a couple others and those typically have not. Gone so well they're down like 95% bird the scooter company did this as well. So it's been a very dry IPO market for startups and thus of interior backed investors. So there has been a lot of anticipation around when is that a PO when they're going to open who's going to be brave enough to kind of stick their foot out there first. And you know a lot of people have been rooming that instacart would be out there there's a couple other companies in this kind of unicorn Stratosphere stripe is another one that we cover a lot on the show from the payments world. There's also the others you can think of Jason there's this one. There's a software one that is just doing really well in AI that's been mentioned a lot not not open AI it'll come to me in a minute. So you know so this is kind of the real. Bang the Big Bang of here's a company that is being brave enough they're gonna go first and we're going to see what happens so it's going to be really interesting and we thought because it hits this Venn diagram of all of our favorite things that we would spend a fair amount of time on. [3:10] So first of all this is a 400 page document so our value add to the listeners is we have distilled it down into what we think are the most interesting little tidbits and some of the things we've learned from instacart it is nice because there's been a lot of rumors about how instacart Economics work and Jason has been tracking their ad piece which is you know cpgs have really seen some really nice results from that so we know that's been active and the areas we picked apart we thought we would cover tonight is I wanted to kind of give you a quick and dirty Scott's guide to reading an s-1 and we'll start at the cover page that's there's actually a lot that happens on the cover page so I want to spend a little time there and kind of give you a little I haven't taken a company poet behind the scenes of what's going on on there and then we're going to talk about some of the overall growth things that just kind of help you understand. [4:07] How to think about instacart how they're growing and what they do and what role they play and then unit economics one of the things that is happening more and more in these s1's is they're doing a more comprehensive cohort analysis and this is basically showing hey if if I car to a customer in a certain period how are they doing now and what are those Trends so that this this had a lot going on there of course we want to talk about the ad business and then little bit of a catch-all for other observations, Jason anything I missed before we jump into the cover page. Jason: [4:42] No I think you mostly covered it just one slight correction it's four of our five favorite things for those listeners that tuned in to hear us talk about Ahsoka we're going to do that on an upcoming episode so that Star Wars would be our fifth. Scot: [4:56] Yes sadly there was no Star Wars in this one so it's that one little part of the over the Venn diagram was left is its own little circle out in space. Jason: [5:06] That's a we call that a teaser for a future episode. Scot: [5:09] Yeah yeah we're we're Pros were 300-plus episodes into this thing and this is the kind of you know Pro level that we deliver on the pod. So you guys missed it Jason forgot to plug in his microphone earlier so that's a yeah we're still still learning every day, so when you open an s-1 the first thing you see is the cover page and it you know a lot of people just Breeze by it because it's a cover page but it has a lot of really valuable information so first of all the first thing that I noticed is I was searching for this on Edgar and I kept typing in instacart and it wouldn't show up and I was like WTH I know this s1's out there why can I not find it and then I saw an article and it said oh the company's real name is maple bear so that's the first thing you see on the cover is the company we all refer to as instacart its actual Corporation name is maple bear and it does business as instacart so I thought I did not know that prior so that was the first thing I learned right there on the cover so that's interesting so if you do go to the will put a link to the s-1 in the show notes but if you do Brave the Edgar SEC database yourself throwing a little Maple bear there and not instacart. Jason: [6:22] Not to be confused with Amazon's house brand Mama Bear. Scot: [6:26] Yeah yeah and I'm sure there's a honey bear and brown bears there's a there's a lot of a lot of bear things going on. The other thing that I was like to see is what symbol are they using I think it's fun to kind of you know as an entrepreneur to kind of think about what symbol you're going to use that best personifies your brand Channel Bowser we had ecom's so that was an exciting one so we captured e-commerce Shopify go. Jason: [6:52] The best ticker symbol of all times by the way. Scot: [6:55] Thank you thanks thanks I appreciate it. Shopify head shop and that was a good one and instacart / Maple bear is going with cart so I think that's a that's a that's a pretty nice one you know it kind of there a multi grocer chart cart and we all think about instacart I'm sure they hate being called Instagram so this kind of like really punches on the cart so maybe they get away from everyone mistakenly calm Instagram. Jason: [7:19] I think it's solid. Scot: [7:20] Yeah A-Plus on the symbol and then in the you'll notice that a lot of the evaluations and how many shares they're selling are blank and that's you know in this draft of this one which is the first kind of public one that they're dropping out there they'll they'll iterate a couple more times they'll do their Roadshow and then write one that, it prices they'll update the S12 include all that information so they'll make kind of literally a game day decision the night before IPO of how much based on the order book how much they want to sell and at what price so that, that's going to be blank through probably several more iterations as we go on then this is did you want to do something in. Jason: [8:04] No I was just I was just thinking that they I assume they left it blank because the underwriters were out of practice. Scot: [8:10] Yeah no no they they are there waiting and that's a good point because when you go public the the companies that take you public in this context they're all investment banks on Wall Street. But they they filled this role of Underwriters and basically what they're doing is they're acting as market makers they're going to cover your stock when it's public and they're also going to be basically pounding the pavement to sell your stock to buy side by side analysts and firms on Wall Street. Which there's two buckets of there's mutual funds and hedge funds there's also retail that I guess there's three buckets, retail would be you log into Schwab or Robin Hood and the diet of the IPO you try to buy some chairs that's retail and they all allocate a little bit of that for the IPO so they like retail to come in and get a little taste. [9:04] A lot of folks that if you're an accredited investor at an institution and you have a wealth manager, sometimes you can get a little bit of access to an IPO before it prices you don't get a special price or anything but you can if you're really excited and you're a retail customer you and you're in this kind of wealthy bucket then you can you can get some allocated shares I think is what they call it these call this friends and family they don't call that, that anymore that's called a allocated shares but what's important about the underwriters is there's actually a signal there several signals here and I didn't know this time went through the process. First of all they have lined up a who's who of investors so even before you get to Underwriters they have this really interesting note right before right underneath before they get in the underwriters and they say oh by the way we have lined up these investors already that have committed to buying and they have committed Asterix and then they kind of like take away the committed but. [10:05] I think that's a legality I think I think it's a pretty hard commitment is my reading of them and they basically say these guys are already these guys have lined up to buy at least 400 million in this offering. Regardless of the price and there's some big names in there there what I would call. Public-private so they have invested in instacart already as a private entity and then they have another side of there. Firm that invest in public entities and they have said that side is going to support the private side and that's nor just Bank tcv. [10:38] Sequoia and a couple others this is very unusual but I think it's an interesting play because it basically says to the market. Hey you don't have to worry about this thing you know taking on the first day because we're going to were signaling to you we're going to place a chunk of this with these folks that are long-term holders and they're going to backstop this thing I think of it as a adding a floor to the IPO basically saying we know it's been a while we know there's risk out there we're going to have a floor on this so so there's built-in demand for this IPO so that's quite unusual and this is the first time I've ever seen anything like that sometimes you'll see tiro price is a big one a big mutual fund that likes to do this or they'll have a private-public and they'll say you know they'll kind of suggests that, they're interested in buying more and they'll come out and say they don't plan to sell or they've accepted a lock up for a year or something like that I've never seen such a strong message as this one so I thought that was interesting. Okay then we move to the bottom of the cover and that's where you have the list of the underwriters and what's really interesting is the way this works is the bigger your font the bigger a role you play in the IPO so on this one the biggest font is Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and you know they have I don't know what would you say Jason like a 40 Point font. Your. Jason: [12:03] Yeah I had to read it with my my PDF zoomed way up so I feel like I yeah but it was a big font. Scot: [12:11] Yeah yeah so those guys get like a you know they're kind of really big and then what's also interesting is where you show up on the page is important so your importance starts at the left and goes down to the right so the most important what we would call the vernacular is the lead left which is the biggest font on the left side of the cover is the lead Investment Bank and as Goldman Sachs and they're they're The Bluest of Blue Chips everyone wants Goldman Sachs if they come out. [12:37] And then usually you want either JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley now JPMorgan has increased greatly and stature over the last three years because they have weathered coded and they have basically absorbed most of Silicon Valley Bank's deposits and a lot of these other riskier Banks and their CEO is pretty famous Jamie dimon so they've this is kind of you know two blue tips on the top of the book here which is pretty interesting and then, then you kind of go down a bit and you end up with 18 more Underwriters and there's like three levels of them there's like the font gets smaller so you go from 40 point to 20 point then you go to like kind of like 15 point and you go to seven point and you know what's interesting is I have never seen this many Underwriters either so they basically have said we want everyone on Wall Street lined to go and help us sell this we will turn no Rock no Rock will be unturned looking for buyers of instacart stock with the institutional investors. There's some International Players so they've basically if you kind of said if you if you. [13:53] Few War Room doubt what are some things a company could do 2D risk an IPO they have done things I've never seen before times like three and then the last thing that's interesting is the economics each of these Banks gets kind of depends on where they are on the page so you know if it all this gets him to like, there's all this Machinery but these guys do it because they make money so Goldman will make their kind of highest percentage and then JPMorgan and so on and so on based on how much they contribute to the book and all this kind of calculus that goes on behind the scenes so I thought that was kind of a really interesting just on the cover some things that were very unusual from other IPOs I've seen Jason anything that you found on the cover that was riveting. Jason: [14:43] We'll know I did. I have a question for you though I got I guess I when I saw all of those Underwriters I kind of and perhaps erroneously assumed that part of what was going on here is, it's been a while since there were in any IPOs that went through an underwriter and that all of the underwriters are out there. Desperate for four deals and that therefore. Instacart had more more leverage to get more Underwriters like is it. Is it literally instacart just agreed to pay more for these two more Underwriters 2D risk the IPO is that. Scot: [15:23] Yeah I think. So human nature is that the lead laughed and Lead right want to absorb a lot of the deal and don't want to share too much so so typically there's some friction there right so they'll be like yeah you could add a couple and they use this tearing language I don't you know this is just kind of how I don't know who how they know what who's what dear, but tier one is Goldman Morgan and JP Morgan Morgan Stanley and then tier 2 is you get kind of Stiefel, a couple others in there then you go tier 3 and then you kind of have like an international kind of tearing as well so usually you get like two from Tier 1 Maybe two or three from tier 2 and then that's kind of it and then if you've if the company feels strongly like another consideration is when you go public one of the things that helps you long term is to have analysts that follow your stock and we've had many of these analysts on our show Mark mahaney Collin Sebastian these are and then Scott Devitt he was at stifel and he's moved on to another shop these are these are famous people in the internet marketing world so you want take Mark sets, I wasn't even as Fern was he ever green but that's not it. [16:40] Ever Quorum so so you as the company can say the Goldman hey I know you guys want to keep a lot of Economics but I want mahaney on this and we got to get ever Cora so some of those on the bottom are probably International distribution retail or something the company wanted kind of specific to add them on and you know that was all pre-negotiated with Goldman getting lead left they had they kind of had to acquiesce to having a bit of a large number of Underwriters on there so I don't yeah I don't think I'm sure they all wanted to be to your point like there certainly wasn't even saying no to being invited to this and they probably you know you just bake off in this was I came to imagine if they ended up with 18 like, mr. started with 80 I don't know it's crazy that was probably like a. Six week bake off just to hear from all the bankers so yes I think there's more around the analyst going on with with the large number on some of those. Jason: [17:39] Got it and then I want to hear your speculation about where the price might come in but I'm trying to remember the details there's been a lot of interesting things going on with the private placements before we got to this point right so I think the some of the valuations of the private placements were at some point disclosed and then I want to say instacart reset there. Their valuation at a lower number while they were still private like presumably to make the equity appealing for employees. Scot: [18:17] Yeah the sequence of events and this is all you know they don't disclose all this in this one because it's kind of like. Jason: [18:25] Sure I'm just trying to get the the Run. Scot: [18:27] The Whispers And if you read some of these you know I subscribe to a lot of things that talk about some of this kind of rumors and so take it with a grain of salt but there was some sequins like they were chugging along and then Covent hit and it was like Off to the Races vertical and I think the wheels kind of came off the bus and they started to lose money because the unit economics weren't weren't ready for for like a surge like that and then right around 21 they replace the CEO and they had to kind of emergency raise some Capital which is kind of like one of the worst times to do it because even though their revenue was surging the rest of the market was in the toilet basically so I think they had to do a Down Round And what I've heard is their bed raised money as high as 39 billion and then they took this haircut at with this new CEO in this kind of re leaning down the company at about 13 billion so. [19:19] So I think that's kind of like the watermark is kind of where they've last raised money and if you look at their revenue that's actually not that's a very reasonable Place given where you know they've grown since then but now what's the revenue like four billion ish yeah so they're like 3 billion and 22 in revs so that's like a four times Revenue which is pretty reasonable for a company growing the way they are with with good profitability so I would be I would not be surprised we don't we won't know this per share price until we see the denominator and they didn't have the denominator which is market cap divided by number of shares equals share price we don't know the number of shares so I would I would suspect. I'll guess, four billion I'm gonna guess 20 billion would be a low like I think it will price they're on the low end and it could go as high as 25 30 depends on you know. Retail and how much momentum it gets with with buyers. Jason: [20:26] And part of the art here is you don't you don't want to price it too low because that means you you have money on the table when you sold your Equity but you also don't want to price too high and have the, the stock like go down from the offering price and get below water right away right so. Scot: [20:49] Yeah it's very common we kind of had this situation at Channel visor we went public right after you know cortical right after in a longer time window of 08 09 and you know they strongly we had golden lead left and they strongly encouraged us to think long-term and not get obsessed about that pricing and leave a little bit of money on the table and yeah and then over time you could do a secondary at a higher price and you really want to you don't want to tank especially in a tepid market so I'm sure this was all part of the um you know Goldman would counter negotiate this to be lead left and say look we we need your commitment that your yep part of the pitch is they give you what they think it's worth and how it's going to price and they also discuss the strategy and that's part of the selection processes and you would think it would be. Okay whoever says they're gonna give me the highest price but you actually kind of they really stand out a lot because the Goldman people can talk about Dave, they've got like a lot of data to back up their strategy and you know there's like Watson there that that are. It would make your head spin and so they do a really good job of talking about why it makes sense to price the way they think and how how they see it over a longer Arc of time. Jason: [22:12] Gotcha so the guys with all the money have really good justification for why you shouldn't worry so much about the money. Scot: [22:18] And then the other thing to know though is what typically happens is you are not sharing you're not selling any one shares so the company so as part of this IPO the company will issue new shares so so you as the founder and the other investors you still have your shares you're not actually selling them at this moment so you know in a way now you get diluted right so the flip of that is your percent ownership goes down but you know it's kind of the would you take a little bit smaller. Of that and long term when you can sell your shares as the investor and the founder and the team and the people that bet on you now you know can you execute and deliver and then earn your way into a higher price and then that's when you can kind of like get some equipment sir. Jason: [23:08] Do you want a little bit of a grapefruit or all of a grape. Scot: [23:11] Yes exactly yep that is a good description. [23:17] Okay so here's here's the other part of the quick and dirty guide to reading the S1 you can take so that's cover is really good and then you take the literally the next let's see what is it. 100 pages and you can toss them so this is where the lawyers come in and they love to make sure you understand all the risk factors you know a meteor could hit the Earth people could stop needing groceries cybersecurity I could be no one wants to shop for them it could be they'll compete with a bunch of people Amazon is always a risk factor Google Microsoft. So all that really doesn't add value and then there's a little bit of financial stuff but it's it's pretty dry and it's kind of like from the Auditors almost so it's like super drive so it always do is you skip to the part of this one we're finally the lawyers have earned their large fees and they vomited forth 100 pages of risk you know stuff. And then you get to write your story and that's called the Management's discussion and Analysis in the industry it's called the md&a. [24:27] It's confusing I thought for a long time it was md&a because Aaron says mdna really fast and they're saying the word A and D and it sounds like an end to me and I kept saying what the heck does md&a stand for they're like what do you mean what's up what are you saying. It's like a who's I first got a thing but it's md&a so Management's discussion and Analysis and this is where you. Jason: [24:49] Because I read all 100 pages and and I'm super depressed and one of the risk factors is the way I could become sentient and take over the Earth. Scot: [25:00] Mmm yep that is a risk factor and then it will bring our groceries to us I guess as we are batteries for its consumption. Jason: [25:08] The computers won't eat. Scot: [25:10] So if you really want you know so what you can do is you can get the gist of 95% of this by printing out the s-1 pages 1012 124 that's it's only 23 pages and it's really dense but it is actually this is actually a very good read they did a very good job of making this so you know. It's very approachable and they go into a level of detail that's really handy into problem so we're going to give you some of the highlights from that but if you want to go deep on your own we will give you all you need to go to the next level just by looking at those 23 pages. Okay so what did you see and them DNA and that got your attention. Jason: [25:55] Well I mean a number of things so maybe just super high level what's exciting to me like obviously a lot of this information about the business was not, publicly available so in the process of going public in issuing S1 they suddenly reveal a lot of things and they reveal things about. Their own business but they also have to paint a pretty good picture of what they think is happening and could happen in the digital grocery business so it's kind of like getting a whole class of really smart people to sort of, write a thesis about the the digital grocery business that we get to read and interpret and you know we they reveal things that we didn't know like how valuable customers are over time and how much consumers spend on a given order at instacart and what percent share of wallet they think digital gets versus brick and mortar and all these sorts of things and we'll get into a bunch of them in the in the individual sessions but my my takeaway from the beginning of that management discussion was that it's a. [27:08] A pretty robust business that the aggregate amount of. GTV that they that they have is pretty significant its twenty eight point eight billion dollars in groceries that they sold in 2022. Scot: [27:27] Yeah and GTV is gross transaction volume so instacart it's basically a Marketplace like eBay or Amazon where parts of parts of Amazon all of you back where you have in the marketplace of product Marketplace use GMB a lot of payment systems like PayPal use tpv gross merchandising value total payment volume they have chosen to use this term for the gross figure of GTV and at first I thought it was going to be groceries to do but it's gross transaction value I thought for sure it was like grocery, I was trying to decode it without looking it up and I was like that can't be grocery because then I don't know what a TV is doing there and you know so then their revenue is a derivative of that meaning of some percentage then of that big number Falls to them as Revenue after they pay the grocer The Shopper and then instacart the business has the leftovers and which ends up, we'll go through the unique and I'll mix it ends up being being pretty small because the grocery business does not have huge merchants. Jason: [28:26] Yeah so kind of looking at those business fundamentals that you know in 2022 they sold 28.8, billion dollars worth of stuff which for them generated 2.5 billion dollars in revenue and they were profitable on that Revenue they they net 428. Million dollars which like back in the a couple years ago when there were more IPOs happening there were there were IPOs in the space they were happening with companies that still weren't profitable so so that was interesting that they they were meaningfully profitable and then the, you know you're super interested in what the growth trajectory is and. [29:13] 20:19 was a very small year so going from 2019 to 2020 you know and then the pandemic app in the middle 2020 and urban was ordering groceries from, from instacart so the growth in 2020 was astronomical like 300% or something like that. But then the growth in 2021 over 2020 was 24%. On revenue and the growth in 2022 over 2021 was 39% in Revenue so. The revenue growth is Meaningful and accelerating. Which would be exciting they were not profitable in 2020 or 2021 so 2022 is the First full year that they were profitable. The GTD is a little different though they had significant growth three hundred percent in 2020 20 percent in 20 21 and 16 percent in 2022 so, well they have a track record of growth it's the top on GTV growth is decelerating. And then of course we're halfway through 2023 so they have to disclose. [30:23] How the well they've done in the first six months of this year and they compared to that to last year and the revenue and GTV are both essentially flat in the first six months of this year. Versus last year so I don't know you'll have to tell me but I look at that and you go man there's some robust stuff here there's a great growth story. I should have mentioned that that's on an annual basis on a quarterly basis they have five consecutive quarters of profitability which also seems. Impressive him pretty favorable but it's probably a slight worry that the. A lot of that growth seems like it's it's leveling off in 2023 I don't know if. That the most recent performance gets gets over weighted or underweighted and sort of evaluating the the prospects for the company. Scot: [31:19] Yeah the buyers will you know what every everyone has a different way they value things and they they're going to build their own models and the company will give them some guidance that's some of the stuff we did it we're not going to go over and but you have to be careful because you don't want to make forward-looking statements so this is this weird dance you do of you. You try to get people excited by not saying anything about the future which is which is a little tricky so you know what I imagine instacart s' just reading the tea leaves again they talked a lot about how they don't really do much sales and marketing which I kind of read to say, look we really hunkered down on our unique economic sand we've got it dialed in right now and spoiler will get to adds a lot of a lot of that has come from this ad piece. And I think now. [32:07] Because investor and I was the bullish scenario is you know they're going to raise at least 400 million they'll probably raise a lot of money from this they could start doing some advertising and you pick up some new customers that again I'm going to kind of hope they look at the cohorts those cohorts look like with what this in the here and they have at least the same unique anomic so if not better and I'm going to look at this growth accelerating wow what Wall Street loves their favorite favorite favorite kind of the top quadrant is accelerating Revenue growth an accelerating profitability and you know I could see a scenario the light has to go their way but I could see a scenario where that works here you know if they could if they could start spending some really careful sales and marketing dollars building the brand where they've been kind of under the radar for the most part and then. That works those cohorts stick and then they can work on the economics because that's gonna bring more advertisers per order because the more average more orders and more. GTV is going to bring more cpgs in that want to advertise against that then you could argue accelerating Revenue growth accelerating profitable unit economics. So I think that's the bull case the bear case is they've hit saturation they've got all the stores. 4% is anemic and nowhere to go but down. So that's the end of it is it is going to be interesting to see there's a little bit of A Tale of Two Cities in those possible outcomes. Jason: [33:36] Yeah what else jumped out at you in the management discussion. Scot: [33:43] They made a big point of talking about they have 7.7 million monthly active users which is a good number but they point out that in the u.s. there's 330 million consumers or I guess population so they use that and this is kind of one of those hints I was talking about the basically said hey we're. We've done good to get here but these are like the early adopters we still have a long way to go there's a lot of people you know I don't think they'll get all of them and I'll talk about that in a second but there's a lot more people that you should be using our service that aren't is so they kind of paint that 7.7 million and say that's teeny tiny compared to where we should be. And then you know the other thing they talked about that I thought was interesting I wanted to get your opinion on is they talk about, per user per month they get three hundred and Seventeen dollars and I was wondering I know you probably know this off the top of your head. What is if you look at the average US consumer and you probably look at the. Population of the convenience store that's like a kind of probably like that 100K and up household you know what is their monthly and is this like half of it a quarter what is your spidey sense tells you on that. Jason: [35:00] Yeah so real rough numbers the average American family and you know people shop for groceries in households versus people so it's almost better to talk in household so there's like 131 million households in the US and sin they've got. Seven million of them as customers the average household shops for groceries 1.6 times a week and they spend a hundred dollars per visit so you kind of you know rough that up and you get. Get what is that I'll have the intern do in turn do the math one point six times. 100 times, 4.5 is 720 total grocery spin which I don't have the census numbers in front of me but but that passes the smell test that so. Households are spending six seven hundred bucks a month and instacart saying that they're getting less than half of that. Scot: [36:12] Yeah and I saw some people speculate on this that, what their inferring is Davin they have an average order of 110 so this is like 2.6 instacart some month instacart orders per user per month that's another kind of interesting metric and then people are speculating in the saying the pattern is probably people are doing a big shop once a month and they're kind of going and getting you know, a lot of like maybe canned goods and things like that and then they supplement it with two or three instacart has to bring maybe a refresh of the the replenishable is like the cheese the milk the veggies and the fruits kind of thing. Again this is everyone just kind of like taking data and kind of going out for data point so the cone of uncertainty is pretty big out there but it kind of passed my sniff test that's how we've used it before, at our house with exception of wizard a lot at work to fill our snack area at work and we're probably like we're probably like top one quartile of this whole thing that's the number of snacks we get from Instagram. There's a deep does that that analysis of the one big shop yourself and then supplement does that. Jason: [37:26] No exact yeah I mean I think the Grocer's talk and I hesitate to bring this up because I don't think I remember I'll for off the top my head but there's like four typical types of shopping missions right so there is that like Pantry stocking shop there's like a weekly shop there's a. Occasion Bay shop where your your it's date night or it's Christmas or whatever and you make a special shop and then there's those, top off shops and I think it's generally agreed like there's not a big cohort of consumers that have just said I'm never using a grocery store again then I'm exclusive we gonna, I have all of my my calories show up at my doorstep so digital grocery ends up being one of the tools in the family's tool kit for, procuring their their calories and so it makes. Total sense that they would have a share that one of the ways they could grow is to increase that share presumably by. Being the best choice for more of those different kinds of missions. Scot: [38:34] Yeah and then the md&a they talk a lot about how they have these new offerings where you can get a weekly Monday thing and they're definitely poking around at this experimenting on how to grow the sand again they're kind of signaling we think we've got some room to go on this we can get that. [38:51] Bridge order up and we can get the ma use way up the second thing I noticed was you know they use this they use this phrase, several times you can tell it's kind of like must be tied to company values and they talk about we believe people want selection quality value and convenience if that sounds familiar to you the this is infamously brought up in the Amazon Jeff Bezos first shareholder letter in 1997 where he talks about the mark you know what Amazon believes and they believe that a multi-decade trend is people will not get tired of selection quality value and when value he uses kind of free shipping like versus product value is pretty specific on it and then convenience and then what got me thinking about this is. [39:38] Value inconvenience her you know they're often in conflict and this is the whole point of we've had, Casey on the show from the Lloyd there bifurcation kind of model which shows this was this I think a lot about this because this is the whole one of the whole reasons I started spiffy and we decided early on if we're going to be convenient we can't be the cheapest and I don't think people look at instacart as the cheapest you know whenever we use it it's kind of like, holy cow this is this is a pretty expensive treat in you know I really kind of need to be able to justify this to myself that I can't just pop over the grocery store and do this myself it needs to be yeah some some reason I'm going to miss a kid event or something that I'm getting a really good bang for the buck here so I thought that was interesting that at some point I wonder do they value part kind of struggle with you know how. Jason: [40:31] I think they have to have a. A more liberal definition of value because I think you're exactly right right and obviously you know value means different things to different people like they disclosed later in the S1 that they not surprisingly that they skew disproportionately to households that make over 100,000 a year compared to a traditional retail and particularly a traditional grocer like give I've no idea what it looked like when they actually did it but when Kroger went public or certainly when Walmart went public they would have talked about the top of their tree that we think the consumer really values price and and Walmart probably said price not value and you know they built a business around very aggressively maintaining those low prices because they thought that was the beginning of their flywheel and and you know Amazon talked about value but they when they said value a lot of what they meant was and we're going to you know have the very competitive or the lowest price on a lot of these goods and, the the business model of instacart makes it unlikely that that can be their positioning so they have to kind of, find a a valid but alternative definition of value to hang their hat on. Scot: [41:50] Yeah and I thought was interesting they put convenience a lot you know last you may say oh you're reading too much into it but you know I've been in rooms you spend so much time on every word there's a purpose to this order of selection quality value and convenience and and they mentioned this exact phrase like several times so this is a this seems to be an yeah a pretty important phrase in their their world to I just thought that was I want to get your take on you know at some point they may cross this road where they have to pick a lane and it'll be if it ain't going to be the value late you know I don't see a path there but you know maybe they think they can and you know they also talked about selling to the grocer some software so maybe that's kind of like how they're squeaking that in I don't know. Jason: [42:36] Yeah yeah and there's I think we'll talk about this and in our final conclusion but the there's multiple ways you could see this going over time and depending on which path it took like value could mean something different. So what will come back to that. I heard you like dissected all of the the disclose data and put together unit economic model for for instacart. Scot: [43:07] Yeah so it starts at the top so the GTV per order so every order that comes in they get the GTV as $110 and then there here's how they slice the onion so the biggest chunk goes to the grocer for the groceries and they get 83 percent which is $91 so right off the top we're left with $19 but now the grocer they have to go make all their money so instacart is that's what you would basically get I think if you and I went to the grocery store you know maybe they're getting a little bit of a discount but they're they're taking that $91 and they're adding $19 on top of it and this is all X tip there's a there's there is a delivery fee and what not so then the Shopper gets 8.2% or nine dollars in order and that's in that delivery fee and then they get the tips. Jason: [43:58] Clarification on shopper because like in most contact Shopper would mean the consumer that's buying the goods The Shopper in this case is is a instacart gig worker that goes to the store and gets Aggregates the order for the customer. Scot: [44:14] Exactly the gig worker is the Shopper so they get nine dollars and they get 100% of the tip so whenever you you know whenever you what what they don't say some of these gay places in this bothers me because we fell out on this they say the gig worker gets 100% but then they take a transaction fee of 3%, now I can't find they say 100% I can't see any little asterisks that says there's going to skim 3% or something so. [44:44] So to the hopefully they're being super up front and they the gig worker does get 100% of the tips but the tips aren't in the economic the kind of sit over on the side to go to kind of bypass instacart all together and they go straight to the shopper. Who also gets nine dollars from instacart so if you gave a 20 dollar tip the the Shoppers going to get 20 plus 9 or 22, then at this point we are finally at instacart Revenue which is ten dollars and that's into pieces seven dollars is the transaction revenue and three is ads. So almost half their margin you know so 30% I guess yeah. I say half because the line is going so fast it will become half probably by 2024 you know half the. Profit the margin the revenue that they get and probably disproportionate part of margin is from the ad piece which we're going to talk about in detail so that is. That's pretty important to this whole enchilada and until they figure that out this didn't really work I do. [45:48] So they get so 110 dollar order $91 goes the grocer that leaves us with 19 Shopper gets nine we're left with 10 7 of that, is the transaction Revenue three is ADS then their costs come out they have three dollars of cost per order. And this is this is things like you know their entire some allocation of all their website hosting the engineering team developed the app. I don't know if they would put sales and marketing in there and they weren't very specific about what they do and don't put in cogs so that was a question mark. And they're left with seven dollars of gross profit for that order. My bet is marketing is not in there and they kind of take that up later but again the didn't really. Disclose that I saw what all was and not in Cox so basically that 110 boils down to seven dollars a profit from them and if we looked at it you know. I bet that three of that seven is basically from the ads and you know because there's almost no cost to serve an ad and so so I thought that was pretty interesting that like you know around half of the Prophet basically is from the ad system. Jason: [47:00] Yeah I think I think it's for sure interesting and like you know two possibilities there there there, average value of an order is 110 bucks traditional brick-and-mortar grocer is a hundred bucks and so one question like did instacart wasn't totally clear I mean they tried to take credit for having a higher order value but it wasn't clear like do we think. There's something unique about our experience that causes people to spend more or. Is our service just more expensive and so therefore you know if I got the same 60 items from from Walmart it would cost me $100 but if I got it from instacart Cassandra and ten dollars. But if it's the latter and I'm sure the real answer somewhere in between but but if it's the latter then you go you know all of the, The Profit that instacart is potentially taking is kind of from the. The convenient spread where they're you know getting consumers to pay more for the extra convenience of this grocery delivery. Scot: [48:08] So that was the unique nanak's what did you discover from the cohorts. Jason: [48:12] Yeah well I think we both we both noticed that they had a pretty detailed cohort analysis in the s-1 and by cohort analysis what we mean is they. They break down all the revenue they get from every. Group of customers on the first year they acquire those customers and then they track the spending for that group of customers in each, subsequent year and so you have a cohort that you acquired in 2017 you have a cohort you acquired in 2018, so on and so forth through this 20:22 cohort and there's. Other dimensions you could do Court analysis on but this this tenure cohort is most common and loyal listeners of the show will know we've certainly talked about it before no most notably with a guest Professor Dan McCarthy. From Emory University who spends a lot of time. [49:13] Talking about and thinking about cohort analysis so I my first thought when I saw this cohort analysis is I'll bet you Dan McCarthy's really happy right now and is probably. Deep deep into these numbers and he has a phrase that he calls a super annuities which is for the circumstances. The older cohorts get more valuable over time and keep contributing more Revenue to your business which is, you know that if you think about it that's that's the ideal state right you want those kind of six-year-old cohorts to be. [49:51] Growing and be your most valuable and if they're you know significantly tailing off over time then like you know you start to question the core value proposition of the business like maybe customers get fatigued with your business or decide it's not a good value in the long run or something else so um the the big takeaway for me of the cohort analysis is the cohorts grow over time the if you look at like the year one value of this cohort it averages $226 and then it goes up 33 percent in year two to three hundred dollars and then up 16%, to 350 dollars in year three and then another up another 16% to 4:00 in your for and then up 10% $445 in year 5 and up another 8% to 480 dollars in year 6 and so like fundamentally. That is a very good picture of. The value of the cohorts and I'm certain why they chose to include the cohort analysis in there as one because I don't believe there's any. Any filing requirement to do that and certainly lots of companies don't include any cohort cohort analysis but then my kind of secondary take is. [51:12] You know not every year is the same and so some of those cohorts like started before Cove it and then they're their behavior, was slightly impacted by their maturity but also impacted by covet and some of these cohorts started after Cove ID and so one of the things you would look for in that cohort analysis is did these guys just get a big spike from Cova da, when people are afraid to go to grocery stores and you know has that worn off right and that's kind of a comment common narrative out there like I argue. [51:45] It's mostly misunderstood when people give that narrative about digital but it's. It's even more likely that is misunderstood if you have that narrative and grocery because grocery appears like on the surface to be the one category where hey we're at three percent e-commerce penetration before covet and now we're 12% e-commerce penetration and so this, these cohort analysis if if there was a spike that dip back down you would expect to see some of the later cohorts underperforming versus the the precoded cohorts and we don't see that right that like all the cohorts grow and they grow over time the rate of growth slows down over time which is like I think pretty pretty typical and not surprising um so all that was super favorable the one thing and one will have to have Dan on the show but the one thing that I think wasn't in here that you'd really want to understand how valuable the customer bases and and again guys like Dan kind of pioneered this idea of how you value a company based on their customer base. [52:53] And kind of set the price based on on this type of data but I think they would also want to see some churn data and understand. How many people are each in each of these cohorts and whether there's the same people or lots of defectors and new people coming and all those sorts of things and none of that was was disclosed and assess. Scot: [53:22] Yeah you're right the I think they're making the argument that the swamps turn but because they don't disclose it you kind of. You have to trust him and he would he would want that data because you know the whole Begin Again the the bull case here is all right if you got super annuities than spending ad dollars to bring super annuities in this smart right because everyone you bring in the door is going to follow this cohort and start of it you know you and I looking at a table that the says you're one they start at 2:26 and then by year 60 at 500 bucks so they they double over their life cycle in their GTV so over six years so if you know if you can go buy them for a hundred bucks a pop then you would just go and, and spend all that money in it should be we have a super annuity on one side you can spend a lot of money acquiring customers on the other. Jason: [54:15] For sure true what. Scot: [54:17] You turn there's something that they could hide in there. Jason: [54:19] Yeah so you have to worry about that you also side note like a thing that drives CFOs crazy about marketers is you also have to have this argument about correlation and causation right that like if I went out and bought a bunch of customers would they maintain this the same level of performance or with those those. Purchase customers through higher advertising and through greater sales and marketing a activities be less oil less valuable customers by. The answer varies depending on the business. Scot: [54:53] Yeah that's where I this kind of come back to that bifurcation thinks I think would you say 120 million households. Jason: [54:59] Yeah 131. Scot: [55:00] Yeah so there's probably I think it's probably a pretty evenly split between convenience and value so call it 60 and they've got 7.7 so there's actually good I think they've got a 10% share of, what does the actual dress for Market because I don't think they're going to get any of the value or in a consumers because yeah the valuing consumer does not pay for convenience they'll just go to grocery store. Jason: [55:23] Yeah and again in the bottom quartile a lot of people are shopping for for groceries with government assistance and I don't actually think instacart should double-check this but I don't believe instacart has a way to accept Snap payments. Scot: [55:36] Yeah I don't think the government is going to subsidize the food delivered. Jason: [55:39] Well they just you know they do in other great white white guy like you can order groceries online from Walmart and pay with SNAP but I don't think you can with instacart. Scot: [55:49] Yes that's another factor and then at some point yeah I'm sure you'll bring this up but the. The if you're if you're a grocer you know a lot of ours opt out of the sand to themselves and they like we have a Harris Teeter that they don't accept instacart yeah they're not on there and they want to do their own they want to own the customer themselves. Jason: [56:12] Yeah I save that discussion for other but I think that's a super important one. Scot: [56:16] Forget I said that that's a teaser that's it's a teaser was what we call a tease. Jason: [56:19] Excellent teaser yeah because I feel like we've gone to the add segment of the breakdown of is there anything else you wanted to cover before that Scott. Scot: [56:28] No I'm on the edge of my seat to hear what you thought about that specific. Jason: [56:31] Yeah so it turns out instacart sanad Essence and probably shouldn't surprise anyone you know Scott you alluded to the change in CEO the the current CEO for this IPO is fidge Asuma Seema who formerly was VP of advertising at Facebook so they brought in a Facebook. Exact to run this business and shoot I should have looked up what episode he was on but Seth Dallaire was a past guest on this show when he was the chief Revenue officer. For instacart which was right around the time that that fidget joined. [57:19] Instacart so we actually had a discussion about their aspirations to become an advertising business and spoiler alert, it worked at instacart which we're going to break into and that guess set the layer subsequently was hired as the chief Revenue officer at Walmart where he's. Building Walmart connect which is also working so turns out ads are becoming an increasingly important part of the ecosystem for retailers but the basic ad math at instacart is that in 2022 the last full year of data instacart generated 470 million dollars in ads so 470 million on 28 billion in GTV, means that that's about 2.6 percent of the spin. That went to ads it's thirty percent of their revenue today and. [58:20] It's growing at 29 percent so it went up 29% from 2022 to from 21 to 20 22. Um it's grown another twenty four percent in the first months of six months of 2023 so, a lot of the unit economics of their transactions have kind of stabilized and are flat the one thing that's still growing at a very fast double-digit pace, is the ad business and at seven and twenty million dollars it's already reasonably robust and they don't. Ads are not a line item on the income statement that they included like you know and presumably like it's not. You could argue it's not Material against the three billion in in Revenue. But the so we don't we don't really know exactly how profitable, Those ads are but in general we would call these ads or retail media Network and the you know people argue about how profitable these retail media networks are people particularly argue about Amazon's but kind of the middle of the range when people estimate how what how profitable these things are is that they're about 75 percent gross right so in theory they should be near 99% gross margin because like you don't have to make anything to sell an ad. [59:46] You know you do need some technology you need an ad server you need Administration and salespeople you need brand safety people you know there is. Some infrastructure some of which has to scale with the ad business and so the the kind of. Most common estimate that that I see out there is like 75% of that revenue from ad business is profit. So that implies that the ad business contributed seven 555 million to the. To the income statement for 2022. Um and they were only profitable 428 million in 2022 so that the ad business contribute like by that sort of slice the ad business contributed. [1:00:33] You know covered all of their losses and and was essentially all of their their profit. In in 2022 and it's growing faster than anything else so it's very clear that the ad business is a key. Tenant of this instacart model and they in the management can section they it was kind of funny working for a big, advertising agency because they had to spend a fair amount of time like justifying that ads are valuable good thing and that people are spending money on ads so they kind of you know paint paint this picture that consumer packaged Goods companies which are you know most of the goods that instacart cells that. [1:01:20] Cpgs in the u.s. spend about 200 billion dollars a year on advertising and currently about a quarter of that is digital. And so the. The you know a typical cpg spends like about thirty percent of their gross sales on advertising and you know at the moment instacart is collecting about less than three percent of its sales in advertising so I think they're saying like hey. Advertising is super effective it's an important part of our economic model and there's a ton of. Of potential growth for us in this market and that cpgs need us and they amongst their claims about the size of their business, there are 50 500 brands that are advertising on instacart today and those are. At the moment all brands that sell. [1:02:18] Whose Goods get sold on instacart so we call that endemic advertisers right so it's it's Mondelez selling cookies and folks like that a lot of advertising companies. Sell ads to people that aren't necessarily selling through the. The the platform we call those non-endemic advertisers and we I don't think there are any non-endemic advertisers on instacart as of yet. But so at the Top Line like these are these are solid fundamentals for an ad business you like. [1:02:54] From my perspective retail media networks are super important evolution in the space they are very important I actually think for a lot of smaller retailers they get overhyped and that there's a problem with scale with a lot of these but instacart appears to be one of the companies. That has enough scale to build a real. A real business around this there is a unique problem that instacart has with ads that you know I think they've only been partially able to remediate so far who's paying for the ads. [1:03:25] Right so they talked about the brands paying for the ad right it's Procter & Gamble about the ad but there's a lot of stakeholders with budgets at Procter & Gamble, there's Mark Pritchard that buys Super Bowl ads and tries to build the brand and make people love tied but there are also account teams, that are trying to Goose the sales at their account so there's a Walmart account team and a Kroger account team and an Albertsons account team and all of those guys have an ad budget, that they want to use to sell more stuff at Walmart Kroger and Albertsons respectively. And so the big problem you have with instacart is you spend that ad dollar with instacart and you don't actually know. Which retailer it's going to impact. Right and so it's kind of like it has to come out of the top of funnel ad budget but it's bottom of the funnel Performance Marketing, type ads mostly search ads and so not saying that model can't work but it's. [1:04:33] The the guys with budgets that are used to buying ads are used to a slightly different structure so I will say that at the moment instacart causes a lot of consternation because it's a it's an unusual Beast that people don't exactly know how to budget for or how to spend their money on and you know I would assume if instacart wants to grow a lot they have to make that, easier for for the brands to do. Scot: [1:05:00] Yeah so what do you think. They're so this is a relatively good chunk of Revenue where do you think they're getting it from is it online going offline I mean offline going online are they taking it from Google are they taking it from couponing or. Two Brands even do like newspaper inserts are still a thing like I know that back in the day. Jason: [1:05:22] So I know I yeah I think. Brands are pretty pretty rapidly shifting their their dollars to digital vehicles and so two things like there's you know traditional kind of, newspaper magazine advertising that's atrophying and and the brands are replacing that with digital there's a slight misnomer the whole privacy thing and Facebook is a real thing but you know who wasn't buying a huge amounts of Facebook ads are like National cpgs with huge brand recall so so you know those tended to be smaller Brands and longer tail things so it's less like oh. [1:06:05] The these guys are shifting from Facebook it's more they're shifting from old-school marketing and over are television to to these digital vehicles but a big chunk of it is still coming out of these trade budgets right and so there may have been a pool of money that was allocated to spend at Kroger and it used to get spend on newspaper circulars that were like Kroger ads that fell out of the newspaper and that's an increasingly ineffective vehicle or maybe they even got spent on floor decals in the aisle at Kroger right you know like Shopper marketing tactics or trade tactics and so increasingly the retail media networks are getting a chunk of those trade dollars and I do think instacart is getting some of those even though it's trickier to do because you know it's not allocated exactly 21 specific retailer at the moment. Scot: [1:07:07] Yeah the so what did the ad formats I've seen is I always get this one that's like you through some Quaker Oats granola bars in there if you add these six things will give you a five bucks or something I've seen a coupon and I've seen a you know an upsell hey you've previously bought this or you may like this are there those are the three main add units or am I missing something. Jason: [1:07:33] Yeah so I am not going to speak specifically about the variation in ad units but as a general rule like probably I'm assuming the most predominant ads on the platform are search ads right so people search for products like always and you know above all the organic results are a bunch of sponsored ads right and so off very often those don't have a special offer in them they're just premium. [1:08:00] And so a big chunk is probably those those search ads you know then they're there are like Banner type ads that that land either on like the homepage of a particular retailer or on a category page or subcategory page and more often those are likely to have some call-to-action offer in them so they might have a promotion or a discount of some kind and then in the digital space um there's a lot of what we call like top off and impulse ads which are what you were just talking about right and you know one of the big problems we have with digital grocery is when you go shopping at the grocery store your wife sends you to the store with a list of 10 items and you buy all those 10 items but then you walk by the ice cream aisle on your way to the cash wrap and you add ice cream even though you didn't plan to buy ice cream and then when you're standing in the cash wrap, you're sneering at that Snickers bar or that Wrigley gum and you add that to the car and maybe a cold Coke to drink on the way home from the grocery store so a big chunk of a traditional grocer sales are all these unplanned impulse purchases and that. [1:09:16] By default happens a lot less in digital Grocery and so a lot of these ad formats are kind of are, our Industries early efforts to try to reinvent digital impulse and I would I would call it pretty imperfect at the moment. Scot: [1:09:35] Don't you get a nursing inside about gum or something like because self-checkout smelled the gum that serendipity. Jason: [1:09:42] Yeah the the that that cash wrap used to be the most valuable real estate in a grocery store like the most Revenue per square foot was that what we call the cash wrap which is the. The conveyor belt that you stand in line and actually the first thing that killed the cash wrap was not any of this digital shopping or any of these things it was. Facebook and the mobile phone and simply because you now had something else to do when you are standing

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