Podcasts about etail west

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2025 58:44

Scripted, mass-produced influencer marketing has sent the internet spiraling toward a dystopian era of “loser-generated content.” Plus, we share key insights from eTail West, a sneak peek into Future Commerce's Word of Mouth Index with Fairing, and dissect some disturbing internet finds of the week.The End of the World As We Know ItKey takeaways:[04:00] Lemon Balm Tea's influencer campaign: Meanwhile, on TikTok, a scripted ad for Lemon Balm Tea sparks hundreds of fake testimonials. How many “highest-paid nutritionists” can there really be?[14:00] Old men yell at the Cloud: Is the internet dead? TikTok, Twitter, and even LinkedIn algorithms are riddled with bots and unchecked scripted influencer marketing.[32:00] The Word of Mouth Index: FC+ and Fairing collaborate on a one-of-a-kind index – available to all FC+ members now.[33:00] eTail recap: Future Commerce's seven sessions included a keynote from Phillip on time capsules and what they represent for commerce and culture. Brian closed out eTail with three sessions in a row on ___[35:00] Overheard at eTail: A lot of concern around tariffs, anticipation for Target's earnings (not looking good), and other fears around national commerce. [45:00] Obvi's viral organic ad: An Arcads.ai employee brags about the efficacy of a recent Obvi TikTok marketing a weight loss supplement. The 14.1-million view video likely drove over five figures of revenue, but critics claim a lack of legality and raise an important question about AI marketing regulation.“It's the grossest way to market.” – Brian“Social is bought and paid for and sold.” – Brian“The greatest reach I've had on Twitter happened when I left a benign comment on Kieran Culkin's Oscar speech and thirty people made fun of me.” – Phillip“Cultural production is downstream of commerce and commerce-driven social discourse happening on the internet.” – Phillip“There are two ways people pay attention to things: If they're funny or if they're hot.” – BrianIn-Show Mentions:Insiders: Alex Greifeld's The End of OutsideOrder your copy of LORESteph Liu on XWord of Mouth Index - designed in partnership with FairingBarry Hott on XAssociated Links:Check out Future Commerce on YouTubeCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Good-Bye Joann, Hello Adidas Buy With Prime & Welcome Walmart To ‘Wally' World | Fast Five

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2025 45:21

In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Simbe, Mirakl, and Ocampo Capital, Anne remoted in from eTail West, Chris was back home in Minneapolis, and together they discussed: - Adidas offering Amazon Buy with Prime via its website and app - Joann no longer being in the fabric of our lives - Sprouts launching its first-ever loyalty program - Kroger and Schnucks enhancing their quick delivery offerings via Instacart - And closed with a discussion of Walmart's new AI tool for merchants, aka “Wally” There's all that, plus nightly news anchors, Joann memories, and Anne's favorite Savage. Music by hooksounds.com

Starbucks Ceramic Mugs & Drizzles, Walmart Pay Increases & Amazon's New Head Of Grocery | Fast Five

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2025 49:27

In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Simbe, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, and Scratch Event DJs, Chris and Anne discussed: - The appointment of Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel to head up Amazon's grocery strategy - Whether CPGs will jump at the chance to pay Walmart to test products with Walmart's actual customers - If Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol could be getting ahead of himself with his plans for ceramic mugs - The veracity of Levi's claims that its partnership with Google Cloud helped it to jump on the “baggy jeans” trend - And closed by lauding Walmart for increasing its pay scale for regional managers There's all that, plus Justin Honaman of AWS stops by for 5 Insightful Minutes to chat about 2025 and Amazon's new Retail Ad Service, and we've got a more hilarious lightning round than usual filled with deep insights into Chris's travel and house slipper habits. Heading to eTail West? Get the Omni Talk Deal Here: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com//?utm_source=OmniTalk%20Media%20Partner&utm_medium=Media%20Partner&utm_campaign=10701.019-%20OmniTalk%20Media%20Partner&utm_term=&utm_content=&disc=ETAILPARTNER&extTreatId=7608370 Music by hooksounds.com

#621: The evolving buyer's journey with Liz Robillard and Kristin Schoenstein, WBR

The Agile World with Greg Kihlstrom

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2025 26:57

eTail Palm Springs is coming up soon - February 24-27 in Palm Springs, CA, and I can't wait - make sure to register while you still can! Today we're going to talk about the evolving buyer's journey, and how good data that drives personalization and effective usage of AI are driving today's leading e-commerce brands. We'll also explore what attendees of eTail Palm Springs can expect, including some exciting new features of this leading event for e-commerce brands. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Liz Robillard and Kristin Schoenstein, Worldwide Business Research. About Kristin Schoenstein Kristin Schoenstein has been a Program Director at Worldwide Business Research since 2010 and has been producing events since 2004. She currently specializes in the retail and eCommerce sector where she heads up the Future Stores portfolio and co-produces eTail West. She also successfully launched and grew WBR's customer experience portfolio. In her role, she is responsible for market research, content creation and speaker faculty management for each event. Prior to WBR, she produced events in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector and got her start organizing educational programming for physicians. In her free time, Kristin heads out to the East end of Long Island where she enjoys boating, yoga, running and days at the beach with her husband and three daughters. About Elizabeth Robillard As an Senior Conference Director at Worldwide Business Research, Elizabeth oversees the organization of three business conferences per year. Conference organization includes conducting extensive phone research with 60+ industry experts per event, using call notes to compile a three day conference program that encapsulates top research takeaways, confirming a roster of industry leading speakers for each program, working with our marketing team to write effective copy for all outbound marketing messages, coordinating with sales and logistics teams to ensure the best possible onsite experience and prepping for and running the live event. Most recently, she has joined the eTail team and along with co-producer Kristin Schoenstein, puts together eTail Palm Springs. The other events in her portfolio include Future Branches Austin & Boston. She currently lives in New York City with her cat Wednesday. RESOURCES Wix Studio is the ultimate web platform for creative, fast-paced teams at agencies and enterprises—with smart design tools, flexible dev capabilities, full-stack business solutions, multi-site management, advanced AI and fully managed infrastructure. https://www.wix.com/studio Don't miss Medallia Experience 2025, March 24-26 in Las Vegas: Registration is now available: https://cvent.me/AmO1k0 Use code MEDEXP25 for $200 off registration Register now for HumanX 2025. This AI-focused event which brings some of the most forward-thinking minds in technology together. Register now with the code "HX25p_tab" for $250 off the regular price. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

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#621: The evolving buyer's journey with Liz Robillard and Kristin Schoenstein, WBR

The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2025 26:57

eTail Palm Springs is coming up soon - February 24-27 in Palm Springs, CA, and I can't wait - make sure to register while you still can! Today we're going to talk about the evolving buyer's journey, and how good data that drives personalization and effective usage of AI are driving today's leading e-commerce brands. We'll also explore what attendees of eTail Palm Springs can expect, including some exciting new features of this leading event for e-commerce brands. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Liz Robillard and Kristin Schoenstein, Worldwide Business Research. About Kristin Schoenstein Kristin Schoenstein has been a Program Director at Worldwide Business Research since 2010 and has been producing events since 2004. She currently specializes in the retail and eCommerce sector where she heads up the Future Stores portfolio and co-produces eTail West. She also successfully launched and grew WBR's customer experience portfolio. In her role, she is responsible for market research, content creation and speaker faculty management for each event. Prior to WBR, she produced events in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector and got her start organizing educational programming for physicians. In her free time, Kristin heads out to the East end of Long Island where she enjoys boating, yoga, running and days at the beach with her husband and three daughters. About Elizabeth Robillard As an Senior Conference Director at Worldwide Business Research, Elizabeth oversees the organization of three business conferences per year. Conference organization includes conducting extensive phone research with 60+ industry experts per event, using call notes to compile a three day conference program that encapsulates top research takeaways, confirming a roster of industry leading speakers for each program, working with our marketing team to write effective copy for all outbound marketing messages, coordinating with sales and logistics teams to ensure the best possible onsite experience and prepping for and running the live event. Most recently, she has joined the eTail team and along with co-producer Kristin Schoenstein, puts together eTail Palm Springs. The other events in her portfolio include Future Branches Austin & Boston. She currently lives in New York City with her cat Wednesday. Resources It's time to register for eTail Palm Springs (Palm Springs, CA) - Navigate the next chapter of retail at this iconic event. Learn more and register Wix Studio is the ultimate web platform for creative, fast-paced teams at agencies and enterprises—with smart design tools, flexible dev capabilities, full-stack business solutions, multi-site management, advanced AI and fully managed infrastructure. https://www.wix.com/studio Don't miss Medallia Experience 2025, March 24-26 in Las Vegas: Registration is now available: https://cvent.me/AmO1k0 Use code MEDEXP25 for $200 off registration Register now for HumanX 2025. This AI-focused event which brings some of the most forward-thinking minds in technology together. Register now with the code "HX25p_tab" for $250 off the regular price. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

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Amazon Auto, Porch Pirate Insurance & Why There May Be No Stopping Tractor Supply | Fast Five

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2024 51:08

In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Ocampo Capital, Chris and Anne discussed: - Amazon's momentous launch of Amazon Auto - Why Tractor Supply Company may be the retailer to watch over the next decade - PorchPals new insurance offering for victims of package theft - Whether Dollar General's slowdown of its fresh expansion signals underlying issues with its grocery strategy - And closed by dissecting the value of E.l.f. Beauty's new 3D Virtual Luxe Lounge There's all that, plus Brooke Chambers, Kroger's Director of Digital Marketplaces, stops by for 5 Insightful Minutes, Shaboozy songs, Brain Rot, and Chris's man crush on the Gambler. To register for eTail West, head here: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com//?utm_source=OmniTalk%20Media%20Partner&utm_medium=Media%20Partner&utm_campaign=10701.019-%20OmniTalk%20Media%20Partner&utm_term=&utm_content=&disc=ETAILPARTNER&extTreatId=7608370 Music by hooksounds.com

Bonus Episode: Mastering DTC and Competing with Big Brands with Scott Ohsman

Honest eCommerce

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2024 25:30

Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 29 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. In This Conversation We Discuss: [00:41] Intro[01:42] Managing new and old podcast equipment[02:34] Building an Amazon career from the ground up[03:51] Navigating retail shifts over 18 years[04:48] Managing business through Amazon's complexities[05:49] Supporting small brands in a tough market[08:24] Recognizing signs to branch into Amazon[09:17] Pushing organic content to stay competitive[10:45] Debunking the myth of overnight success[11:47] Evaluating margins before jumping on Amazon[14:11] Navigating Amazon's tough commodity landscape[15:11] Focusing on hero items for better visibility[16:37] Spending wisely to boost product discoverability[17:46] Avoiding common pitfalls on Amazon listings[19:04] Safeguarding against Amazon's listing restrictions[19:53] Mastering conversion rates and traffic insights[20:54] Understanding the impact of UPC errors on listings[22:47] Preventing issues with initial product setup[23:16] Exploring services at Quickfire[24:23] Hiring smart for different business modelsResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeDigital commerce agency built brand first quickfirenow.com/ A show that covers brands, retail, e-commerce, digital advertising, Amazon, and more podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/always-off-brand/id1560745895Follow Scott Ohsman linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

From Words to Wins: Scott Cohen's Impact in Email Marketing

THINK Business with Jon Dwoskin

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2024 20:30

Having begun life as a copywriter, Scott Cohen has worked on both sides of the aisle, as a brand-side marketer running the email marketing programs at Purple, 1-800 Contacts, and Western Governors University as well as agency side working with clients ranging from small businesses to enterprise companies across multiple industries. Scott won the 2021 Stefan Pollard Email Marketer of the Year Award from the ANA Email Experience Council for his work during his time at Purple. He's a sought-after speaker, webinar, and podcast guest, having spoken at events like the Email Insider Summit, Email Evolution Conference, Email Innovations Summit, eTail West, and more. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big! Connect with Scott Cohen: Website: https://www.inboxarmy.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottcohen13/ *E – explicit language may be used in this podcast.

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Bonus Episode: Redefining SEO: Content Engagement Over Keywords with Brent Peterson

Honest eCommerce

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2024 26:40

With over 25 years of experience in the e-commerce industry, Brent is the President and Founder of ContentBasis LLC, a cutting-edge startup that helps businesses optimize their content discovery through predictive analytics and human expertise. ContentBasis is a unique solution that combines advanced technology and human talent to enhance clients' digital footprint and customer experience. Throughout his career, Brent has been a serial entrepreneur, a keynote speaker, and a fervent advocate for outstanding e-commerce solutions. He started his first eCommerce website in 1995 and later co-founded and led Wagento, a top Adobe Commerce Agency in the Americas. He has also been recognized as a Magento Master for five consecutive years for mentoring the Magento community and delivering exceptional projects. As a podcast host and a global speaker, He shares insights and best practices on various topics related to e-commerce development, project management, and customer experience.He is also an active Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) member and a passionate endurance athlete. 27 Marathon, 1 Ultra Marathon, 6 Majors, and one Ironman.In This Conversation We Discuss: [00:41] Intro[01:08] Exploring Ecommerce platforms[02:31] Talk Commerce's immersive podcast world[03:07] Crafting human-centered content solutions[04:58] Customizing solutions: AI for specific needs[05:57] Data-driven strategies: leveraging sales insights[08:06] Refining AI output for accuracy in content[10:12] Experimental success via testing SEO strategies[13:14] Evolving SEO: Beyond keyword stuffing[14:58] Establishing authority through content expertise[16:19] Addressing key concerns across platforms[17:57] Finding your USP and thinking outside the box[18:49] Tracking new and lost keywords[20:21] Staying ahead & doubling down on niches[21:10] Diversifying content: exploring audio & video[22:25] Exploring AI in podcasts[24:03] Exploring creativity beyond content creation[25:15] Get in touch with Talk Commerce & Content BasisResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeEmpowering entrepreneurs and marketers for success talk-commerce.com/Unique solution that combines advanced technology and human talent contentbasis.io/Follow Brent Peterson linkedin.com/in/brentwpeterson/If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Scott Cohen – How Email and SMS Can Help Win Back and Retain Customers

Becoming Preferred

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2024 41:58

SEASON: 3 EPISODE: 33Episode Overview:There are five generations of buyers in today's competitive marketplace and about 19 communication channels, so whether you're looking to maximize revenue to grow your company, boost engagement and awareness, increase repeat customers, or encourage brand loyalty, my guest today can help. Standing out from the crowd and getting your message heard is always a challenge. Employing email and SMS marketing remain potent tools for engaging with customers. By implementing best practices such as personalization, mobile optimization, and clear CTAs, while avoiding overwhelming frequency and generic content, you can harness the power of these channels to drive meaningful results in your marketing efforts. To help us understand how to use these tools effectively is award winning marketing expert and CEO of Inbox Army, Scott Cohen.Guest Bio: Having begun life as a copywriter, Scott Cohen has been a stalwart in the email marketing industry since his boss came to him and said, "Hey, you write the newsletters... why don't you do them?" He has worked on both sides of the aisle, as a brand-side marketer running the email marketing programs at Purple, 1-800 Contacts, and Western Governors University as well as agency side working with clients ranging from small businesses to enterprise companies across multiple industries.Scott won the 2021 Stefan Pollard Email Marketer of the Year Award from the ANA Email Experience Council for his work during his time at Purple. He's a sought-after speaker, webinar and podcast guest, having spoken at events like the Email Insider Summit, Email Evolution Conference, Email Innovations Summit, eTail West, and more. (He also won a Bronze Telly Award for the very first TV ad he ever wrote, so "it's been downhill ever since.")Given his unique experience, Scott knows enough "to be dangerous" about email marketing, SMS, and many things CRM and retention marketing. He's built and managed larger CRM and retention teams, sent millions of emails (and a few million SMS, too), and written more than a few ads, blog posts, brochures, websites, and many other content pieces over the course of his 20-year marketing career. He's pressed the "Send" button a few thousand too many times to be anything other than frank about what email marketers need to do!Resource Links:Website: https://www.inboxarmy.com/Product Link: https://www.inboxarmy.com/email-marketing-packages-pricing/Insight Gold Timestamps:03:41 My career started as a copywriter05:42 You're a songwriter, but you just do it in your emails06:52 It put email back on the map, that's really what COVID did08:56 What are some of the common misconceptions about email and SMS marketing? 10:27 Odds are you're not sending enough emails10:33 By the time you get sick of it as an ad professional, somebody's finally seeing it10:47 Being there in the inbox consistently with value drives branding11:42 I believe in the concept of what we call being professionally persistent13:31 The days of the once a month newsletter are dead15:35 The ‘dreaded wall of text' is something you want to avoid in email17:20 If you want to have a PDF, post it on your site, and you can link to it in the email17:43 Do not use a bitly (in email)19:11 Deliverability is a whole different animal 22:48 You can spend 10,000 tweets building a reputation, and one tweet destroying it (Scott Stratton)23:20 Warm up the mailbox first25:38 How do you demonstrate the...

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“A Podcast, About A Podcast, Agencies, Shopify & Rock N Roll!” with Chase Clymer

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 18, 2024 27:14

Recorded live during eTAil West in Palm Springs, a fun different show with our guest, Chase Clymer. Host of Honest Ecommerce and partner in Ecommerce Agency, Electric Eye. From playing bass in a band that went on tour, to some now famous band mates, to running an ecommerce agency! Quite the ride and we talk about the inside look of how podcasts are made! Summer Jubelirer, Scott Ohsman and Hayley Brucker! Always Off Brand is Ecommerce Simplified, Learn & Laugh! QUICKFIRE Info: Website: https://www.quickfirenow.com/ Email the Show: info@quickfirenow.com Talk to us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickfireproductions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickfire__/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@quickfiremarketing LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/quickfire-productions-llc/about/ Guest: Chase Clymer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaseclymer/ Website: https://electriceye.io/ Podcast: Honest Ecommerce: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honest-ecommerce/id1447700156 HOSTS: Summer Jubelirer has been in digital commerce and marketing for over 16 years. After spending many years working for digital and ecommerce agencies working with multi-million dollar brands and running teams of Account Managers, she is now the Amazon Manager at OLLY PBC. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/summerjubelirer/ Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 28 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/ Hayley Brucker has been working in retail and with Amazon for years. Hayley has extensive experience in digital advertising, both seller and vendor central on Amazon. Hayley is based out of North Carolina and has worked in multiple product categories and has also worked on the brand side and started with Nordstrom on the retail floor. LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayley-brucker-1945bb229/ Huge thanks to Cytrus our show theme music “Office Party” available wherever you get your music. Check them out here: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cytrusmusic Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cytrusmusic/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cytrusmusic SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VrNLN6Thj1iUMsiL4Yt5q?si=MeRsjqYfQiafl0f021kHwg APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/cytrus/1462321449 “Always Off Brand” is part of the Quickfire Podcast Network and produced by Quickfire LLC.

273 | Shifting To Full-Time Founder: Stability vs. Risk | with Shaina Rainford

Honest eCommerce

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 15, 2024 21:49

A few years ago, Shaina, CEO of Bask and Lather Co's younger sister lost ALL of her hair to a ringworm that spread across her scalp and was misdiagnosed as dandruff. Dermatologist told her mother that her hair may never grow back after months of having a smooth, shiny scalp. Out of desperation, her mother took things into her own hands and created a scalp oil to stimulate growth, which is now the company's #1 best selling product and a viral sensation. Shaina, who is also a licensed Nurse Practitioner, helped her mother perfect the formulations and ensure that the ingredients were all natural and safe. In addition to running the now 8-figure company, Shaina is a mother, fiancee and real estate investor.In This Conversation We Discuss:[00:40] Intro[01:53] The origin story of a hair care breakthrough[02:55] Harnessing homemade remedy to restore hair health[03:45] Using Instagram to validate potential market[04:34] Building a brand story and launching with impact[06:01] Scaling followers using strategic collaborations[06:33] Finding relevant pages to reach a wider audience [07:46] Prioritizing organic reach across platforms[08:06] Workplace struggles as driving force to full-time CEO[10:20] Doubling revenue through full-time entrepreneurship[11:10] Episode Sponsor: Electric Eye[12:07] Ensuring business stability before going full-time[13:26] Harnessing Facebook Pixel for ad success[14:49] Finding an agency dedicated to the business[15:26] Reflecting on team dynamics in decision-making[16:50] Outsourcing warehouse operations for efficiency[18:44] Valuing passion and grit before skills when hiring[20:53] How to get products from Bask & Lather Co.Resources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubePrevent hair loss with hair growth products baskandlatherco.com/Follow Shaina Rainford linkedin.com/in/shaina-rainford-ms-rn-fnp-c-27b241113/Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connectIf you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Recorded Live From eTail West - CEO of Tushy, Jason Ojalvo. For People Who Poop!

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2024 23:24

Recorded during the eTail West conference in Palm Springs, CA in late February, Scott has a great discussion about building the #1 brand in the bidet business and creating incredible marketing. Taking on “Big TP '' among other poop filled discussions on how the US is way behind on this better, cleaner and more earth friendly potty business. Jason talks about the marketing end of a large D2C brand like Tushy and how they are constantly streamlining operations and creating a great company culture. Summer Jubelirer, Scott Ohsman and Hayley Brucker! Always Off Brand is Ecommerce Simplified, Learn & Laugh! QUICKFIRE Info: Website: https://www.quickfirenow.com/ Email the Show: info@quickfirenow.com Talk to us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickfireproductions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickfire__/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@quickfiremarketing LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/quickfire-productions-llc/about/ Guest: Jason Ojalvo CEO of Tushy LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonojalvo/ Hello Tushy - https://hellotushy.com/ DISCOUNT CODE 10% on your first order at Checkout: OFFBUTT HOSTS: Summer Jubelirer has been in digital commerce and marketing for over 16 years. After spending many years working for digital and ecommerce agencies working with multi-million dollar brands and running teams of Account Managers, she is now the Amazon Manager at OLLY PBC. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/summerjubelirer/ Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 28 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/ Hayley Brucker has been working in retail and with Amazon for years. Hayley has extensive experience in digital advertising, both seller and vendor central on Amazon. Hayley is based out of North Carolina and has worked in multiple product categories and has also worked on the brand side and started with Nordstrom on the retail floor. LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayley-brucker-1945bb229/ Huge thanks to Cytrus our show theme music “Office Party” available wherever you get your music. Check them out here: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cytrusmusic Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cytrusmusic/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cytrusmusic SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VrNLN6Thj1iUMsiL4Yt5q?si=MeRsjqYfQiafl0f021kHwg APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/cytrus/1462321449 “Always Off Brand” is part of the Quickfire Podcast Network and produced by Quickfire LLC.

Unveiling the PB Five Star Pickleball Brand: An Interview with Angela Caltagirone - Episode 335

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2024 16:53

In this episode of The Ecommerce Braintrust, Kiri Masters sits down with Angela Caltagirone, the Chief Digital Marketing Officer of PB5 Star, a brand in the pickleball category. They discuss the official launch of PB5 Star at the Etail West conference in Palm Springs, the demographics of pickleball players, the brand's positioning and go-to-market strategy, and the unique challenges and opportunities in the e-commerce space for a new brand. In today's episode, Kiri and Angela discuss: PB5 Star's official launch at Etail West and the success of the pickleball tournament at the conference. The demographics of pickleball players and the inclusive nature of the sport. The positioning of PB5 Star as a brand that combines style, camaraderie, and wellness for the pickleball community. Differences between pickleball and tennis apparel, focusing on attention to detail, comfort, and style. The founding team's extensive retail experience and their go-to-market strategy for PB5 Star. The decision to start with a direct-to-consumer approach and plans for future expansion into retail channels and marketplaces. The brand's emphasis on authentic storytelling, partnerships, and collaborations in its marketing strategy. The use of technology, AI, and a focus on responsible growth to establish the brand's presence in the market.

The Future of Brand Activations feat. Paola Pugliese, Frette

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2024 35:57

“Customer obsession” is an overused phrase. But for Frette, it just might be true. Phillip and Brian sit down with Paola Pugliese of Frette to discuss heritage luxury, DTC-specific category extensions, and the future of brand activations at cultural events. Recorded live at eTail West.“Quiet Luxury is Not a Trend”Key takeaways:- The power of consumer demand has grown, with brands needing to be true to their values and work closely with customers for relevance and delight.- Frette focuses on partnerships with select partners, such as hospitality properties and designers, to ensure their products land in the right environments.- Quiet luxury is inherent to Frette's DNA, focusing on quality, heritage, and timeless design rather than logo branding.- Brand partnerships expand brand reach and offer opportunities for exclusive experiences and collaborations that go beyond just selling products.{00:08:12} - “You have to be true to your value and really work with your customers firsthand and understand what is the best way, as I said, to serve them, to also delight them, surprise them, and keep being, in a way, present in their daily lives.” - Paola{00:11:23} - “For a luxury brand, especially, services are fundamental. And there's no better way to design your next relevant service or product than actually asking the people that are going to use it.” - Paola{00:14:56} - “When you really have the same vision about the importance of the experience of the customers and the way you want them to enjoy the product, then you can also create interesting partnerships that go beyond just selling the product.” - Paola{00:25:38} - “Quiet luxury in itself is not a trend, buzzword. We were there before. We are gonna be there after. What is gonna speak for us is forever the quality, the heritage, what we stand for. And that is always going to be the best value for us.” - Paola{00:29:19} - “I love what you're saying about brands being the new muses, which is also building on the fact that brands need to have an opinion and share the values, and executives need to put their face after what the brand stand for. So we start with what might be interesting and relevant for the customers.” - PaolaAssociated Links:Learn more about Frette and Paola PuglieseCheck out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and printThe MUSES Journal is here! Grab your copy of our latest annual journal today at musesjournal.comHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce worldListen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Data Drives Growth: Bonsai CEO Matt Butler Live from eTail West

Talk Commerce

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2024 33:46

SummaryIn this episode, Matt Butler, CEO of Bonsai, discusses the importance of data in winning and the evolution of marketing measurement. He emphasizes the need for businesses to move beyond short-term wins and focus on long-term value. Matt also highlights the power of first-party data and the challenges faced by retailers in capturing and utilizing data. He predicts that in 2024, more merchants will prioritize data-driven decision-making. Overall, Matt is impressed with the eTail conference and the diverse range of experiences and technologies showcased.TakeawaysBusinesses need to focus on long-term value rather than short-term wins.First-party data is a powerful tool for understanding customer behavior and optimizing marketing efforts.Capturing and utilizing data is essential for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers.IT and marketers need to work together to effectively leverage data.The eTail conference provides valuable insights and showcases a wide range of technologies.Chapters00:00Introduction and Background04:06The Importance of Data in Winning06:21The Evolution of Marketing Measurement08:15Defining a Good Win Rate for Data10:31Challenges in Convincing Stakeholders12:56The Changing Landscape of Google Ads16:34The Power of First-Party Data22:02The Shift Towards Data-Driven Decision Making25:36The Importance of IT and Marketers Working Together27:44Impressions of eTail Conference

LIve From Etail West -“Retailer EVO Finds Good AI Customers Love!” with Nathan Decker

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2024 25:52

Another fantastic conversation from ETail West in Palm Springs, CA. Scott sat down with Nathan Decker, Director of Ecommerce at evo.com. He was employee number one and has been part of the amazing growth. Nathan tells all the fun battles being in retail and how he and his team found AI that is making their customers happy! Always Off Brand is Ecommerce Simplified, Learn & Laugh! QUICKFIRE Info: Website: https://www.quickfirenow.com/ Email the Show: info@quickfirenow.com Talk to us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickfireproductions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickfire__/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@quickfiremarketing LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/quickfire-productions-llc/about/ Guest: Nathan Decker - Director of Ecommerce at evo.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deckernathan/ Evo: https://www.evo.com/ HOSTS: Summer Jubelirer has been in digital commerce and marketing for over 16 years. After spending many years working for digital and ecommerce agencies working with multi-million dollar brands and running teams of Account Managers, she is now the Amazon Manager at OLLY PBC. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/summerjubelirer/ Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 28 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/ Hayley Brucker has been working in retail and with Amazon for years. Hayley has extensive experience in digital advertising, both seller and vendor central on Amazon. Hayley is based out of North Carolina and has worked in multiple product categories and has also worked on the brand side and started with Nordstrom on the retail floor. LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayley-brucker-1945bb229/ Huge thanks to Cytrus our show theme music “Office Party” available wherever you get your music. Check them out here: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cytrusmusic Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cytrusmusic/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cytrusmusic SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VrNLN6Thj1iUMsiL4Yt5q?si=MeRsjqYfQiafl0f021kHwg APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/cytrus/1462321449 “Always Off Brand” is part of the Quickfire Podcast Network and produced by Quickfire LLC.

Cos North America's Katie Reeves: 'There is a store renaissance happening'

The Glossy Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2024 27:36

Cos, the H&M Group fashion label founded in 2007, is now hitting its growth stride. The London-based brand has been expanding its international storefront, with new stores in Mexico City and Stockholm plus a new outpost in New Jersey in 2023. Today, the brand has a 248-store portfolio, spanning 48 physical markets, 38 online markets and selected wholesale partners. Wholesale is a recent venture for Cos, starting in 2022 with retail partners Nordstrom in the U.S., e-commerce business Yoox, and German-based Breuninger online. Katie Reeves, managing director of Cos North America, leads the North American growth initiatives. After starting her merchandising career at H&M Group in 2003, Reeves left in 2011 before rejoining in 2021 at Cos. “The Cos brand itself has an amazing DNA, and I was excited to harness that and introduce the brand to many more consumers within the North American landscape,” she said on the latest episode of the Glossy podcast, recorded during the recent eTail West retail conference in Palm Springs, Calif. A growing roster of storefronts is just the tip of the iceberg for Cos, as the brand has sought to build on its NYFW momentum via new marketing opportunities timed to the bi-annual event, plus new store technology that can facilitate stronger customer connections and service. Speaking with Glossy, Reeves detailed where Cos is focusing its efforts, who the Cos customer is and why she thinks there is a brick-and-mortar renaissance. Get more from Glossy with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit glossy.co/newsletters to sign up.

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Etail West - “Digital Advertising Done Smarter!” with James Schwyn & Taylor White

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2024 36:33

Our live recording at the Etail West show from Palm Springs, CA! What a blast to talk to James Schwyn from Quartile and Taylor White with RTB House. Talk attribution, programmatic sales and DSP. So many juicy nuggets and a lot of laughs. Always Off Brand is Ecommerce Simplified, Learn & Laugh! QUICKFIRE Info: Website: https://www.quickfirenow.com/ Email the Show: info@quickfirenow.com Talk to us on Social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quickfireproductions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quickfire__/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@quickfiremarketing LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/quickfire-productions-llc/about/ Guest: James Schywin - Director, Enterprise Sales for Quartile LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesschwyn/ Quartile: https://www.quartile.com/ Brand Busters Podcast: https://www.thebrandbusters.com/ Guest Taylor White - Director Enterprise Sales for RTB House LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorswhite/ RTB House: https://www.rtbhouse.com/ HOSTS: Summer Jubelirer has been in digital commerce and marketing for over 16 years. After spending many years working for digital and ecommerce agencies working with multi-million dollar brands and running teams of Account Managers, she is now the Amazon Manager at OLLY PBC. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/summerjubelirer/ Scott Ohsman has been working with brands for over 28 years in retail, online and has launched over 200 brands on Amazon. Owning his own sales and marketing agency in the Pacific NW, is now VP of Digital Commerce for Quickfire LLC. Scott has been a featured speaker at national trade shows and has developed distribution strategies for many top brands. LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-ohsman-861196a6/ Hayley Brucker has been working in retail and with Amazon for years. Hayley has extensive experience in digital advertising, both seller and vendor central on Amazon. Hayley is based out of North Carolina and has worked in multiple product categories and has also worked on the brand side and started with Nordstrom on the retail floor. LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayley-brucker-1945bb229/ Huge thanks to Cytrus our show theme music “Office Party” available wherever you get your music. Check them out here: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cytrusmusic Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cytrusmusic/ Twitter https://twitter.com/cytrusmusic SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VrNLN6Thj1iUMsiL4Yt5q?si=MeRsjqYfQiafl0f021kHwg APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/cytrus/1462321449 “Always Off Brand” is part of the Quickfire Podcast Network and produced by Quickfire LLC.

5X-Ing Amazon Sales With a Brand Re-Launch: Ash McMullen From Advantice Health - Episode 331

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2024 31:27

In this episode, host Kiri Masters interviews Ash McMullen, the e-commerce lead at Advantice Health, the company that manufactures the brands Amlactin, Kerasal, and more. Ash recently presented a case study about Advantice's portfolio brand “Triple Paste” at eTail West in Palm Springs, sharing how a strategic re-launch of this brand on Amazon ultimately led the product to become a top-3 seller in its category and 5X-ing total sales on Amazon within 2 years. In this conversation you'll learn: How a ‘full-funnel' approach was key to success - looking beyond ROAS (even planning for deteriorating ROAS in the journey) was key. Ash discusses the need to shift focus from traditional metrics like ROAS to broader, more relevant metrics aligned with the overall strategy. This shift allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of campaign success. The number one component for the re-launch? “Content, content, content” and how Ash positions investment in content to executives. How a product variation strategy enhances the shopper experience. How to have a great relationship with your finance team. Ash values collaboration between different teams, particularly with the finance team, to align marketing tactics with content strategies. Leading Indicators like new-to-brand percentage, traffic source analysis, and overall sales trends to ensure you're tracking toward a bigger goal like market share. What Ash is excited about in ecommerce, and what she's changed her mind about.

Shopware live from eTail West with Jason Nyhus

Talk Commerce

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2024 26:17 Transcription Available

SummaryIn this episode, Brent Peterson interviews Jason Nyhus, the General Manager of Shopware US. They discuss the background and culture of Shopware, the innovation and differentiation of the platform, the challenges of enterprise platforms and Shopware's focus on the mid-market, the power of open source and community in Shopware, the importance of serving the mid-market and providing value, Shopware's AI capabilities and driving innovation, the impact of pricing models on merchants, the outlook for 2024 and the role of agencies, the strengths of B2B commerce in Shopware, optimism in the e-commerce industry, upcoming conferences and events, and Shopware United and community support.TakeawaysShopware is a market leader in Germany and is expanding into the US market with its world-class product.Shopware differentiates itself through its open-source model, allowing for innovation and contributions from a large community of developers.Shopware focuses on serving the mid-market, providing enterprise-class capabilities at an affordable price.Shopware's AI capabilities drive innovation and efficiency for merchants.Merchants should consider the total cost of ownership and the scalability of pricing models when choosing a commerce platform.The e-commerce industry is optimistic about the future, with a growing focus on digital transformation and investment in new tools and technologies.Shopware United is a nonprofit organization that supports the open-source community and is deeply connected to Shopware's strategy.Chapters00:00Introduction and Background of Shopware02:23Innovation and Differentiation of Shopware05:29Challenges of Enterprise Platforms and Shopware's Focus on the Mid-Market06:27The Power of Open Source and Community in Shopware09:18The Importance of Serving the Mid-Market and Providing Value10:15Shopware's AI Capabilities and Driving Innovation12:35The Impact of Pricing Models on Merchants14:28The Outlook for 2024 and the Role of Agencies22:19Optimism in the E-commerce Industry23:16Upcoming Conferences and Events24:04Shopware United and Community Support

Fast Five Shorts | Marc Lore's Wonder Set To Open Inside Of Walmart

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2024 6:38

In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five live from eTail West sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW-Logistics and Sezzle Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: Marc Lore's Wonder Set To Open Inside Of Walmart For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/67YNMyUtLgU

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Fast Five Shorts | Schnucks Debuts Its Smart Cart From Instacart

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2024 3:30

In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five live from eTail West sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW-Logistics and Sezzle Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: Schnucks Debuting Its Smart Cart From Instacart For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/67YNMyUtLgU

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Fast Five Shorts | Macy's To Close 150 Stores

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2024 4:59

In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five live from eTail West sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW-Logistics and Sezzle Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: Macy's Closing 150 Stores For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/67YNMyUtLgU

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Fast Five Shorts | Amazon Announces Scheduled Grocery Delivery And Pickup

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2024 4:55

In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five live from eTail West sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW-Logistics and Sezzle Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: Amazon Announcing Scheduled Grocery Delivery And Pickup For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/67YNMyUtLgU

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Fast Five Shorts | Microsoft Bolsters Its AI Ranks With Mistral AI Investment

BrandBusters CPG and eCommerce Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2024 5:06

In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five live from eTail West sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW-Logistics and Sezzle Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: Microsoft Bolstering Its AI Ranks With Mistral AI Investment For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/67YNMyUtLgU

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BrandBusters Ep. 5: Top Tips to Get the Most Out of Trade Shows

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 29, 2024 27:54

In Episode 5, The Brandbusters - James and Sean - chat about how brands, retailers, and vendors can get the most out of attending tradeshows. James is coming to you live from eTail West. What you'll learn: 1. Should your brand or company attend a tradeshow? 2. Putting in leg work before the show (where the magic happens) 3. Tips to network at the show and build lasting relationships 4. Following up and following through. Want exclusive content from James and Sean? Sign up for their newsletter. Time Stamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:40 - Should You Attend a Trade Show? 04:30 - James' Take on Attending Trade Shows 07:35 - Having a Plan For The Show (Before the Show) 13:00 - Tips to Network at the Show 15:00 - Should Big Brands Feel Obligated to Attend? 18:55 - Keeping Your Personal Routine Amid The Chaos 20:35 - Following Up After The Trade Show

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Equipping the next generation of eCommerce professionals - Nicole Hatley, Skechers

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2024 7:16

In this episode of the e-commerce brain trust podcast, Kiri Masters, head of Retail Media Strategy at Acadia, interviews Nicole Hatley, Global Content Strategy Manager for Skechers, at the Etail West conference in Palm Springs. Nicole discusses her role in managing Skechers' content across all e-commerce platforms and countries and the unique challenges that come with it. Nicole also shares her experiences as a professor of e-commerce marketing at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. The discussion covers the rapid evolution of e-commerce and how she prepares her students for a continually changing market. Nicole also shares her excitement for the future of e-commerce, specifically personalization efforts. 00:00 Introduction to Nicole 00:24 Nicole's role overseeing Global Content Strategy for Skechers 01:54 Nicole's role as a a professor of e-commerce marketing and equipping the next generation for this dynamic industry 05:56 The Impact of Personalization in E-commerce 06:41 The most impactful personalization tactic that Nicole is using right now

#483: Omnichannel and the future of retail with Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard, eTail Palm Springs

The Agile World with Greg Kihlstrom

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2024 21:17

eTail West in Palm Springs, CA is coming up in a few weeks and I'm excited to be attending as well as moderating a panel there. To get ready for the event, I have invited the two event directors here today, and we're going to talk about some of the top trends for retailers to watch out for and certainly topics that will be discussed in much detail at the conference. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard from Worldwide Business Research and event directors of eTail Palm Springs, February 26-29 in Palm Springs, CA. Resources Learn more and Register for eTail West, February 26-29 in Palm Springs, CA: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/ Worldwide Business Research: https://wbresearch.com/ Sign up for The Agile Brand newsletter here: https://www.gregkihlstrom.com Get the latest news and updates on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-brand/ For consulting on marketing technology, customer experience, and more visit GK5A: https://www.gk5a.com Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

#483: Omnichannel and the future of retail with Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard, eTail Palm Springs

The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2024 21:17

Fast Five | Sephora Kids, Store No. 8 & What Wayfair's CEO Should Do To Remove The Egg On His Face

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2024 54:27

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, A&M's Michael Prendergast and Manola Soler joined Chris and Anne to discuss: If Macy's made the right move rejecting its buyout offer this week Whether innovation labs, like Walmart's Store No. 8, are ever a good idea How Wayfair's CEO can ever get the egg off his face in light of recent leaks and layoffs Estimated the viability of IKEA's new plan and order store concept And closed with a look at the #SephoraKids phenomenon and what it means for how retailers and brands should be thinking about Generation Alpha There's all that, plus grills that are way too hot to handle, how carb-laden a last meal at In-N-Out should be, and Chris somehow manages to spell "OMNITALK" correctly this week. P.S. Don't forget to use our promo code "OMNITALK" to save on your Shoptalk registration. P.P.S. Chris and Anne are also headed to eTail West in Palm Springs in February, and you can join them and save by using code "OMNITALK20" on your registration. Music by hooksounds.com

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Double Your Industry Connections and Success in 2024: Insider Tips to Dominate Retail Conferences - Episode 323

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2024 33:43

In this episode of The Ecommerce Braintrust, Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia, dives deep into the nuances of navigating industry conferences and events with expert precision. Kiri delivers an insightful look into maximizing the value of attending conferences, based on personal experiences, fruitful strategies, and networking best practices. Make sure you tune in to find out more! In today's episode, Kiri talks about: - Her growth trajectory as a manager and practitioner, and the importance of leveraging events for continuous learning. - Strategies for connecting with professionals across various companies to expand perspectives and foster potential collaborations. - Implementing event-learned knowledge into business practices to secure the ROI on travel and conference expenses. - Tips on sharing insights on LinkedIn after events, including creating listicles, and the use of engaging visuals such as mind maps. - Understanding the true essence of networking and the significance of stepping out of one's comfort zone for long-term career advantages. - Handling interactions with exhibitors, including learning from Richard Kestenbaum, asking pertinent questions, and extracting meaningful insights. - Best practices for securing speaking opportunities and maximizing post-event follow-up routines. - An overview of the value-packed conferences Kiri is set to participate in during the first half of 2024, such as Etail West and Retail Media Summit among others. - Insights into devising a strategic approach to select and benefit from various industry events, especially when under budgetary constraints. - Kiri's six golden tips for effective networking and creating authentic relationships by avoiding trivial small talk using her innovative AVH conversation formula. - Guidance on how to engage with fellow attendees and vendors pre-event, during, and post-conference for enhancing networking opportunities and building lasting connections. - Navigating the exhibition floor with confidence, dispelling the awkwardness, and transforming it into a treasure trove of industry knowledge and trends. Events at which Kiri is speaking this year: Etail West ANA media conference DSI event Acadia - Retail Media Summit

Episode 122 - Crushing It With Email And SMS

The Digital Slice

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2023 28:17

Visit thedigitalslicepodcast.com for complete show notes of every podcast episode. In this episode of The Digital Slice Podcast, Brad Friedman and Scott Cohen dive deep into the topic of crushing it with email marketing and SMS to drive sales. Having begun his work life as a copywriter, Scott has worked on both sides of the aisle, as a brand-side marketer running the email marketing programs at Purple, 1-800 Contacts, and Western Governors University as well as the agency side working with clients ranging from small businesses to enterprise companies across multiple industries. Scott won the 2021 Stefan Pollard Email Marketer of the Year Award from the ANA Email Experience Council for his work during his time at Purple. He's a sought-after speaker, webinar, and podcast guest, having spoken at events like the Email Insider Summit, Email Evolution Conference, Email Innovations Summit, eTail West, and more.

Fast Five | Amazon Auto, A Toys R Us Reboot Review, Gap's Turnaround & Another Kohl's Hot Mess

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2023 49:24

In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Firework, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Anne and Chris: - Got really geeked up about Amazon selling Hyundai online - Pulled the caution flag out on all the Gap turnaround headlines - Lauded Walgreens for its decision to close an e-commerce fulfillment center in favor of shipping more from its stores - Feared we can already start to smell the smoldering dumpster fire at Kohl's - And closed with an in-person review of the new Toys R Us flagship store at the Mall of America There's all that, plus 5 Insightful Minutes on U.S. consumer sentiment with Chad Lusk, Stanley mugs, our favorite camels, and the always unanswerable question of, “Where does the sidewalk really end?” To sign up for eTail West head here: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/srspricing/?utm_source=Media%20Partner%20OmniTalk&utm_medium=Media%20Partner&utm_campaign=10701.018%20eTail%20West%202024%20-%20OmniTalk%20Media%20Partner&utm_term=&utm_content=&disc=OMNITALK20&extTreatId=7591090

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Liam Patterson: Bidnamic CEO, Building a 100 Person SaaS & Helping Brands Win Google Shopping Ads

The Louis and Kyle Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2023 48:18

Liam Patterson, the CEO and Co-founder of Bidnamic, joins us in this episode to shed light on the dynamic world of Google Shopping and its significance for e-commerce businesses. He shares his journey of transforming Bidnamic from an internal tool to a full-fledged Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. One of the key highlights of our conversation is the evolving landscape of product bidding. Liam discusses the changing dynamics and strategies for maximizing revenue by targeting specific search terms. He also emphasizes the importance of leveraging Google Shopping Carousel, a powerful feature that can help e-commerce businesses capture a significant share of the market. As the conversation delves deeper, Liam provides valuable insights into managing a rapidly growing company. He shares his experiences in stakeholder management and effective communication within a growing team. Additionally, he highlights the significance of prioritizing communication in multiple locations, especially in a remote work setting. Liam also touches upon the importance of upskilling in engineering and research, which can drive innovation and growth in any organization. Check out Bidnamic:→ Website: bidnamic.com→ Twitter: twitter.com/bidnamic→ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/bidnamic→ YouTube: youtube.com/@Bidnamic→ Instagram: instagram.com/bidnamic→ Facebook: facebook.com/bidnamic/ Connect with Liam:→ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/liam-patterson Resources Mentioned in The Episode:→ Booking.com: booking.com→ Shopify: shopify.com→ Sunil Gowda: linkedin.com/in/sunilgowda→ eTail West: etailwest.wbresearch.com→ Herschel: herschel.com→ ChatGPT: openai.com/blog/chatgpt Help The Louis and Kyle Show:If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a review!→ Leave a review: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1504333834→ Drop us an email: LouisandKyleShow@gmail.com→ Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCb6qBiV1HAYcep87nKJmGhA Follow The Show on Social Media:→ Twitter: twitter.com/LouisKyleShow→ Instagram: instagram.com/louiskyleshow→ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/65567567 Connect with Louis and Kyle:→ Read Louis' Newsletter: louisshulman.substack.com→ Louis' Twitter: twitter.com/LouisShulman→ Kyle's Twitter: twitter.com/_kylebishop→ Louis' LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/louisshulman→ Kyle's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kyle-bishop-7b790050

"The Digital Natives are Analog-Curious"

spotify chief marketing officers kayne etail west

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2023 51:49

Today we cover the absence of a modern media format war and the reemergence of convergence devices. PLUS: What is the key to building a better future for your brand? According to Peter Karpas, CEO at Bold Commerce, it's the "customer trifecta": great products, quality customer flow, and thoughtful customer journeys. Listen now!The Commerce Quilt{00:03:28} The digital natives are becoming the analog curious, and it's now a sustainable business model to sell analog formats to a new audience{00:09:48} “eCommerce itself is its own convergence device in that it's the natural intersection of all of these things like logistics, payment, and catalog.” - Phillip{00:27:28} Bold Commerce is a stepping stone to create a revenue impact that heads towards the composable world. Brands can integrate Bold and solve common checkout problems{00:33:35} “Any word that you have to explain what it means is not a good marketing word.” - Peter Karpas{00:35:11} “We would be better if we all realized that there is a skill and a trade that is as old as humanity itself to acquire and that's really just understanding human needs and desires and trying to bring those things together.” - Phillip{00:36:45} Good communication is customer-focused{00:43:14} Improving your checkout conversion numbers even by 1 or 2 points can have a massive impact on your bottom line, but you need the right checkout solutions to be able to achieve thatThanks to WB Research and eTail Palm Springs for making this interview possible. eTail is one of our favorite retail and eCommerce industry events. Plans are already underway for their Boston show, happening in August. Get more information and register right over here.Associated Links:Meet us at The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 in June!Learn more about Peter Karpas and Bold CommerceHave you checked out our YouTube channel yet?Get your copy of Archetypes, our newly published 240-page journal. Check it out at ArchetypesJournal.comSubscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceHave any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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Alexa Ritacco, Chief Marketing Officer at Jenni Kayne — Live from eTail West 2023

RETHINK RETAIL

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2023 17:56

This episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast was recorded live at eTail West 2023. In this episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast, host Gabriella Bock sits down with Alexa Ritacco, Chief Marketing Officer at Jenni Kayne. Alexa shares insights on how Jenni Kayne, a high-end lifestyle brand, has grown, emphasizing the importance of standing by your product. She also talks about how Jenni Kayne has found success by utilizing popular social media platforms and investing in influencer strategy. Throughout the discussion, they discuss the importance of staying true to the brand's values and mission, and how being women-founded and owned has been an integral part of Jenni Kayne's success. Listen in to learn more about the strategies behind Jenni Kayne's growth and their current plans to expand their social media presence. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know by subscribing to our channel and giving us a 5 star rating us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. - - - - - - Host: Gabriella Bock Produced by Gabriella Bock

Terry Roberts, Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer at American Eagle Outfitters

RETHINK RETAIL

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2023 26:02

This episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast was recorded live at eTail West 2023. In this episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast, host Gabriella Bock sits down with Terry Roberts, Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer at American Eagle Outfitters. Together they discuss how he started the company's diversity and inclusion department and implemented sustainable change throughout the organization. Roberts shares his insights on creating authentic, from-the-ground-up efforts to promote inclusivity and diversity within the company, while also navigating the challenges of implementing new tactics within an already successful business. Throughout the conversation, Roberts highlights the positive impact that these efforts have had on the company and its employees, as well as the overwhelmingly positive feedback that American Eagle Outfitters has received from its customers. Listen to this thought-provoking episode to learn more about the importance of prioritizing diversity and inclusion within retail organizations, and how American Eagle Outfitters is leading the way in creating a more inclusive industry. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know by subscribing to our channel and giving us a 5 star rating us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. - - - - - - Host: Gabriella Bock Produced by Gabriella Bock

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Hamid Saify, SVP of Digital Retail at Liquid Death - Live from eTail West 2023

RETHINK RETAIL

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2023 16:07

This episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast was recorded live at eTail West 2023 on February 28th, 2023. In this episode of the RETHINK Retail Podcast, host Gabriella Bock sits down with Hamid Saify, SVP of Digital Retail at Liquid Death. Since launching in January 2019, Liquid Death has built a list of impressive achievements, including working with Tony Hawk and creating Super Bowl ads. Together, the pair delve into Liquid Death's strategy for engagement and consumer retention, which prioritizes entertainment and curiosity while veering from traditional marketing methods. Additionally, Hamid shares his insights into the company's unique approach to marketing, which includes an internal creative team and a focus on user-generated content. Listen in to discover what Liquid Death is offering for the first time to its consumers and what this product offering means to the brand. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know by subscribing to our channel and giving us a 5 star rating us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. - - - - - - Host: Gabriella Bock Produced by Gabriella Bock

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FOMO on Headless and Marketplaces With Rick Watson

The Digital Deep Dive With Aaron Conant

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2022 30:35

Rick Watson is the Founder and CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting, where his work is centered around supporting investors and management teams. He has over 20 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur and operator exclusively in the eCommerce industry. He has worked with companies like ChannelAdvisor, BarnesandNoble.com, Merchantry, and Pitney Bowes. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a major in electrical engineering and a minor in computer science. Rick is the host of The Watson Weekly podcast, where he speaks with experts in the retail space. He has also been a featured speaker on Bloomberg Surveillance, Bloomberg West, NRF Shop.org, ECommerce Europe, and ETail West. In this episode… Is it in your company's best interest to introduce your brand into a crossborder marketplace or to enter into a headless platform? If you're looking for a better way to navigate a headless eCommerce space, Rick Watson is here to share his expert strategies for navigating the back-end architecture and strategies that contribute to the success of your brand. With years of experience in the eCommerce industry, Rick knows that at the end of the day, the consumer experience is what matters most. For brands, consumer acquisition should be at the top of the list. Rick suggests that brands keep things fresh, interesting, and new to keep hold of consumers in today's fast-paced marketplace. How? By entering into a crossborder marketplace, brands can make it convenient for the consumer to find their products on various platforms. On this episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant sits down with Rick Watson, CEO and Founder of RMW Commerce Consulting, to discuss how best to optimize the headless eCommerce marketplace for your brand. Rick talks about how to avoid pitfalls in the eCommerce ecosystem, how crossborder platforms can increase your revenue and brand reach, and why understanding data is crucial for the success of any brand.

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Ecom 80/20 Podcast: Episode 10: eTail West Recap

ECom 80/20

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2022

The post Ecom 80/20 Podcast: Episode 10: eTail West Recap appeared first on HiFlyer Digital.

ecom etail west

"The X-Factor": Live from eTail West Palm Springs (Feat. Tommy Lamb and Mary Grace Tifft, WITHIN)

Adventures in Supply Chain

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 4, 2022 46:37

Everything is Better in PersonEveryone is still suffering through the turmoil of work from home life, job transitions, not knowing how to interact with customers, and so much more but Etail West was able to provide a way for everyone to relate and be in person again for the first time in a long time.“The struggles that any company has to build out culture, whether it's in-person or even more challenging when it's remote, those challenges are no different than when you're trying to build a relationship with your customer.” -Tommy Culture transparency is important, from company culture all the way down to building relationships with your customers.Mary Grace has a brilliant way of thinking called X-Factor, where she analyzes everything on three levels, execution, raw nerve or bravery, and the overall X-Factor (or wow factor) to the thing being analyzed.Etail West provided the opportunity for everyone to connect again, it provided the safety net for life to feel free and for those attending to interact and share successes and helpful strategies of how they pushed through the times of COVID.Associated Links:Learn more about Tommy Lamb, Mary Grace Tift and WITHINWatch us build in public. Subscribe to our YouTube or Twitch and never miss a Casting Visions Episode!Subscribe to Insiders and Senses!Listen to our other episodes of Future CommerceInfinite Shelf Season 2 coming in March!Stay tuned for our newest season of Step by Step…coming soon!Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Data and Tech in Supply Chain - How to Run a Successful E-Commerce Business with Guest Rick Watson

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2021 20:07

This is episode 34 of Adventures in Supply Chain podcast. We are pleased to present the Data and Tech in Supply Chain Video Series with guest Rick Watson, E-Commerce Expert. This episode is sponsored by USM Supply Chain. USM stands for Unstoppable, Scalable, Mindful Supply Chain. Check us out at usmsupplychain.com to scale up your profits together with your supply chain. Our guest, Rick Watson, after spending the last 20 years as a technology entrepreneur and operator exclusively in the eCommerce industry with companies like ChannelAdvisor, Barnes & Noble.com, Merchantry, and Pitney Bowes, started his own business to help with incubating and growing direct-to-consumer businesses.Rick has been a featured speaker at nationwide news programs such as Bloomberg Surveillance and Bloomberg West, as well as at a number of retail-focused industry events including NRF Shop.org, ECommerce Europe, ETail West, and others. In this episode we talk about the following: What are the most common challenges that e-commerce companies face? Is it Marketing or Supply Chain? Where are cost savings opportunities? What is the role of data and technology in e-commerce companies? If a company needs to choose a particular area where to invest in technology, what's that area? And why? Thoughts about the battle between UPS and Amazon? What companies that are already in business and want to scale should do? What companies that want to start or developing more their ecommerce channels should do, in particular those that are doing B2B?

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What is NOT Working in Ecommerce? - Live From Etail West

hint ecommerce senior director palm springs hint inc etail west

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 9, 2020 22:31

In this week’s episode, we’re bringing you an interesting conversation with Chelsie Arvizu who is the Senior Director of Ecommerce at Hint Inc. Chelsie has a really strong Ecommerce background and we were thrilled to get her insights during the eTail West conference in Palm Springs. This episode is all about Hint’s very interesting resourcing structure as well as what’s NOT working in Ecommerce from Chelsie’s perspective. Tune in to find out more! MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Connect with Kiri Masters Connect with Chelsie Arvizu Learn more about Bobsled Marketing Find out more about Hint, Inc.

How to Overcome Fake Review Problem? - Live From Etail West

amazon fake overcome coo ecommerce palm springs fakespot etail west

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020 37:32

We're coming to you live today, from the eTail West Conference, in Palm Springs. We're very happy to have Rob Gross, the co-founder, and COO at Fakespot, joining us on the show. Rob is in the business of making things more transparent for online customers. Currently, the number of counterfeit products and fake reviews appear to be at their peak, and this has become very challenging for online platforms. In today's episode, Rob discusses the trends he is seeing, and he shares some simple solutions for the multi-faceted problem of bogus reviews. Tune in, to find out more. Connect with Kiri Masters Connect with Rob Gross Find out more about Fakespot Read more about Sentinel Learn more about eTail West

Re-Imagining Commerce Survey 2020 - Live From Etail West

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2020 21:19

We're coming to you live today from the eTail West Conference in beautiful Palm Springs. Our guest for today's show is Ed Kennedy, from Episerver, and he will be sharing some of his insights about current retail trends. Ed Kennedy has spent the last 10 years designing and implementing ecommerce platforms for consumer brands, B2B manufacturers and wholesale distributors. As a Senior Director of Commerce at Episerver, Kennedy is responsible for successful adoption of the Episerver platform by customers. Episerver is a software vendor that runs thousands of e-commerce websites, and powers the experiences for retailers and brands that sell online. This is the fourth year in a row that Episerver has served about four thousand consumers from around the world, by examining their buying trends and behaviors, to understand how online shopping is changing currently. Episerver polled over 4,000 consumers across five key geographies: the US, UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden. The following trends highlight the direction e-commerce is headed in 2020. Be sure to tune in today, to hear what Ed has to say about the latest trends in online retail. Find out more about Episerver Connect with Ed Kennedy Connect with Kiri Masters Learn more about eTail West Read about Re-Imagining Commerce Survey

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EP211 - ThirdLove Co-Founder David Spector

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2020 44:05

EP211 - ThirdLove Co-Founder David Spector David Spector is the Co-Founder of ThirdLove, a digitally native direct to consumer women's intimates brand. Dave founded the company with his wife Heidi Zak. In this interview with Dave, we discuss the origin of the company, their data driven approach to designing products, the challenges with scaling a DTC company, and the potential role of omni-channel. We also discuss their public feud with Victoria Secret. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 211 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live from the Etail West tradeshow in Palm Desert on Wednesday, February 26th, 2020. 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. Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show this episode is being recorded live from the ETail West Trade show in Sunny Palm Desert on Wednesday, February 26th 2020. I'm your host, Jason Retail G. Goldberg And unfortunately, Scott was unable to join us today. So as usual, when we have a good show, we kind of bump Scott from the agenda, and we make up for it by having a particularly awesome guest S O for today's show. Please welcome David Specter, the CEO or co CEO, an important distinction and co founder of Third Love. Dave: [1:00] It's great to be here, Jason. Thanks so much. Although. Jason: [1:01] We are thrilled to have you all, though I kind of feel it's true that you're the least important co CEO at Third Love. Dave: [1:10] I'm probably the least important person at third love. Uh, yeah, but it doesn't mean that your podcast is any more or less important just because I'm here. Yeah. Jason: [1:10] I'm probably the least important person, that makes us feel special on the podcast. [1:22] I feel like we're arguably the second best podcast in the space compared to which everyone your wife is doing today. Dave: [1:29] Fortunately for my company, she's back at home, actually running the place, adding value. And I'm here sitting with you, Jason. A detail. So which one's more important? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm still honored to be here with you. Jason: [1:29] Unfortunately for my company, adding adding, adding value. [1:39] I That's why I like the double bandwidth from a power couple is so useful for a company. Dave: [1:46] Dividing conquers what we like to say. So here I am, a detail and it's and it's an honor to be sitting with you. You've got a great podcast. Enjoy listening to you guys. So thanks so much excited Thio chat about what we're doing at their love. Jason: [1:48] Exactly. I like it. [1:53] So thanks so much excited about what? Gotcha. Uh, that's ah flattering to say. And flattery will, of course, get you, like, mostly anything you want. Dave: [2:03] Most anything you want if you want to know. Jason: [2:04] If you want me to avoid the tough questions, Uh, that's that's a smart way to play it. Dave: [2:08] But will it get me more sales online? That's the question, Jason. Jason: [2:11] Yeah, we're gonna have to talk about that. But before we jump into that, listeners are always super interested in the background of our guests and particularly if you like. We have a lot of listeners at home that aspire to be you one day. So can you share, um, sort of your your path to your current role? Dave: [2:28] So my path is is quite different than most founders. In some ways, I was at Google. Jason: [2:28] So my path is is quite different than most. So I What's that? Google. I've heard of them there. Ah ah, an up and comer and I think is there for years. Dave: [2:36] I've heard of them. They're nothing. Come, right. I was there for a couple of years. From 2007 to 2010 after business school on business school, I met my my wife and better half and business partner Heidi. Jason: [2:45] Business. Why, then my wife, arguably the best reason to go to business school. You don't s so I've been told. Yes, I actually met my wife at one of these trade shows. Dave: [2:52] And, you know, from experience, Jason. [3:00] Oh, so trade shows air a lot less expensive than going to business school, though. Jason: [3:03] And less work, frankly. Dave: [3:04] Yeah, take a lot less time. So I think you actually ended up in a better place. And I did. And that way it saved in save less money. Jason: [3:06] So I think you actually ended up in the better. Okay, I don't know. I've caused both winners. Dave: [3:13] Uh, save more money. So Well, anyway, so we, um, was a Google for a couple of years on then, while I was that Google was recruited by Sequoia Capital to join them, I never wanted to be a venture capitalist was never on my radar. I am a builder. I enjoy managing people building teams. I was never thought of myself as an investor whatsoever. And so I took the opportunity, joined them. I was based in Silicon Valley and started investing in startups in 2010 and it was really interesting time because the Internet and sort of Web to die, though three dado however you want to define it. Jason was really starting to get prevalent on was growing quickly, and so we were sort of at the beginning and forefront of that. And brands online were really just starting. Amazon existed. Prime. I'm not entirely prime did exist, but nowhere near to where it was two today, and retail was still popular that the Mullens were successful. The death of retail sort of. That narrative didn't exist then, And so when we got started in 2010 investing, nobody was really thinking about consumer brands in the same way I took it. A cz an initiative myself as a new investor because I thought it was something that could be big toe, actually get started on start looking at brands and where e commerce was going and so ended up investing in a company named Stella and dot. [4:39] Back when I was at Sequoia was quite involved in the business. As much as an investor on the sidelines can be, but got very interested in broadly female base commerce. [4:49] And so, in other words, women that were building brands online to serve other women. And because the percentage of women founders is so low, generally it's higher now, and we're lucky that it is higher now. But it was even lower then, and there was a lack of our dearth of the number of female focus brands that we were seeing online. And so what we decided to do is make it an initiative to actually find those businesses and brands. And in many ways, as it was at Sequoia and was thinking about what we were looking for as investors. [5:25] Hide and I were talking about the intimate apparel space, and it was a category that I had never thought of. Uh, certainly thematically, it was never on our radar again. I was thinking of sort of female based commerce, commerce, new sort of web, 2.0, base brands. DdC wasn't a term then, on sort of where the Internet was going from a commerce perspective, and she was thinking about intimate apparel, and sort of in our living room at night, just like many businesses that air started, we started conceiving of of what then was called something else. But what is now third love and we started to get really sort of excited about what we could build online and where we thought this industry was gonna go over the next decade. And that was really the beginnings of third love on our living room in our living room, on our dining room table, laying things out before we took the sort of bold leap that every entrepreneur takes in this country and quit her job. Jason: [6:22] That is awesome. And ah, I suspect a majority of our listeners are already familiar with third Love. But for those that aren't can you gonna give us the elevator pitch? About what you doing? What you're you're unique value properties. Dave: [6:36] Absolutely so we set out and and have executed on today, really three things. One was to build a brand which is authentic and highly inclusive, too. Was architect away to buy abroad that doesn't require a fitting room or visit to a store. And three was not designed and manufactured better product. Using the latest in material science and data science to absolutely nail fit and comfort two areas fit in comfort that really have never been a part of the narrative. Previously in this category you know women for the most part, which was very interesting to me as we were looking at the category. Nobody really likes their bra. Nobody has a strong attachment to the brand that they wear. It's fine. It does the job. They have to wear it. It sort of part of what they need to do every day. But they don't really enjoy the experience shopping for it, nor do they like the product very much. And so we thought there was a huge opportunity Oh, to do those three things. But look in summary, we wanted to change the status quo and how comfortable abroad can be and wanted to build a brand that was for every woman, regardless of size, shape or ethnicity. Jason: [7:41] That that is awesome. And it's it's shocking in hindsight. Ah, but But, you know, you really think about the successful players in the space prior to your entry, and it frankly feels like they were mostly focused on marketing two men, Um, so somewhat shocking that there was, like, such a white space tow both market, too, and, like focus on product attributes specifically for the users of the product. Dave: [8:07] Yeah, you know, that was really surprising to me. I I like you, Jason. Have been on the other end of that marketing as a man by this gift for your spouse or something along those lines. And I was always really surprised that the marketing, as I started to think, sort of outside the box of me as just a consumer. Why the marketing was always so focused on me when this was a category where the vast majority of purchases in it our focus on women but our focus on their needs and focus on them as, as moms, as them as business executives, as them as doctors, as nurses, et cetera. And so I was really surprised that the vast majority of marketing prior to Third Love was focused on that. And so what we set out to do, which again was quite counterintuitive given that the largest player in the space was peaked at a $30 billion market cap in 2015 I was doing very, very well with very high margins, that we would think that we wanted to do something completely opposite of what they had done. So from a sort of building a startup perspective. It seems pretty crazy on and funny enough, the investors that we pitched mostly thought we were crazy. Jason: [9:21] Yeah. Uh, you tell me This is true for you, but a in talking to female entrepreneurs, Um, there's a common story that it's really hard to pitch your business to V. C's because they the tender not have empathy and see the market opportunity for products that have, ah, value Prop two women less so than the men. So they tend to not understand a woman's problems, and therefore the opportunity is strongly. Dave: [9:49] Yeah, And you know, I had somewhat of a leg up because I sat on the other side of the table. Jason: [9:54] Yeah, I'm sure. Dave: [9:56] And the leg up, though, that I had was when I started to think about how we needed to pitch third love to a mostly male audience. I had been in that audience previously, so I had the opportunity to think through what we needed to do differently and what the people on the other end of the table who are not, for the most part, are not sexist at all. And the end of the day, whether it's widgets, bras or the next great you know, Social Media platform, they ultimately don't care. Veces wanted back great entrepreneurs going after large markets, building riel sustainable businesses, and so and they don't care what it could be. Uh, and so when I thought through what we needed to do differently in this category, we really needed to sort of change the narrative of what we were gonna build and how we were going to do it. Uh, and that was really what helped us get off the ground and helped us appeal to what was a mostly male audience when we were pitching. As you said earlier, a mostly female oriented business. Jason: [11:01] Um, so fast forward to today. Ah, couple weeks ago, we had wary Ingrassia on the show s o. He's the author of $1,000,000,000 brands. And as I I assume, you know, uh, you are one of the prominently featured brands that he writes about in the book. Um and so am curious. Ah, like, I assume you've at least read that chapter. Does it feel like he captured? Ah, an accurate representation of your story, Or is there any quibbles you'd like to take? Well, he's not here to defend himself. Dave: [11:34] You know, we were honored to be in Larry's book and to be sort of one of the the company's defining the direct to consumer New Age brand generation. And he did a very good job of capturing this story of Third Love and how we got to where we are today. And you know where we are today. It was, you know, it's seven years in, so we're on, sort of not even really on first base yet. We're just getting started. Uh, but how we got here to almost first base if we if we put it that way, is a story in itself and one of perseverance. Many, many, many challenges. [12:11] Lots of late nights. I and a lot of failures on a lot of mistakes to Heidi and I have always been one to admit our mistakes and to try toe try to spend time thinking about what we would have done differently. And fortunately for us, Way made numerous near fatal mistakes in the early days of the business. [12:33] Example was manufacturing in Mexico on trying to build a maid on demand supply chain the broad industry interesting Thio. Most men or women have no idea about this Broad's one of the most complex garments to produce. There's 30 components in a bra, even with automation today in manufacturing things air mostly hand cut in hand sewn and being outsiders in the industry. We looked at that, and then in the by the way to that point, the amount of time it takes to develop a new size and a new style is very, very cumbersome and laborious. It takes a long time, and so s so you need to have a large wallet and you need to have a big company to develop it. Which is in part, why the largest competitor in the space has gotten so big on the untold story of them is really supply chain. And there's a lot that they did in the supply chain that we have a tremendous amount of respect for, because getting supply chain dominance to be able to produce product at that kind of scale is really hard to dio. And so we looked at that as young founders and we said, What do we want to do? Different how we flip this pretty backwards process that's been the same for five decades? [13:45] Flip it on its head and just do things differently. How can we use technology to build something that's fundamentally different? And so we conceived of a new way of manufacturing that we that enabled us to get into the supply chain. People wouldn't have taken our call if we just said We want to make a better bra in China. [14:03] Uh, and so they took our call and, by the way, didn't take our call because we had no volume. We didn't have money to spend. And there's a lot of money required on the manufacturing side, the manufacturer side to get a new company up and running with new sizes and new styles. And so nobody wants to work with a new company because of the amount of cap access required to get them started in R and D. And so we had a pitch that was very, very unique around made on demand, and they don't demand while it didn't work, and it was a near fatal mistake. That mistake, like many things in it start up, is what enabled us to be successful today in the supply chain in a fairly short amount of time because of that learning that we had with this mate on demand supply chain, in Mexico that enabled us to get a foothold into the supply chain, that we were then able to pivot to Asia and start getting started. T get started building what is fundamentally a better bra with entirely novel raw materials. Better fit half sizes. And we're the only company in the world that offers half size bras, 34 B and 1/2 C and 1/2 et cetera. We couldn't have done that without some of those early mistakes. Jason: [15:10] That is awesome, and I wantto poke on the half sizes. But before I d'oh if I were toe grossly oversimplify, wear his breakdown Of all the companies in the book, uh, he kind of talked about. There's these these three different ways digitally native brand, um, might seek to gain advantage, right? Like there's there's companies that take cost out of the chain so they can sell a lower price product. Warby Parker, for example. There's companies that reduce the friction to acquire the product. They make the buying process easier. So bed in a box versus having to go to a traditional mattress store, which could be a miserable experience on. There's companies with, like, unique product innovation that in some way, uh, invent a better mousetrap. And most of the companies he talks about 10 to primarily have one of those three. Advantage is one of the things that ah, as an outsider I admire about your company, is, it seems like you're really leveraging all three advantages, so it feels like you focused on a unique product that's better than what was available. You have, ah, lower friction way of acquiring it, and because you're direct um I'm not sure you're necessary competing directly on price, but you're able to offer Ah. Ah, very strong value proposition. Dave: [16:32] Yeah, And again, I This is, I think, in order to build a successful director consumer business and by no means every successful we have so much more work to D'oh! Jason: [16:32] Yeah, And again, I I in order to build a successful, I don't mean to be successful. Dave: [16:44] You have Thio Well said Jason. Jason: [16:45] You're 13 years away from being overnight success. Dave: [16:51] Um, yeah. I mean, look, we I don't think that having just one of those things allows you to be successful having just lower price, and the website doesn't work because everybody does that. An Amazon does that Amazon does that and can compete with you all day long and get it to you a lot faster with better customer service and way more selection. So you have to have a combination of many, many things. [17:21] Our category is one where price is important, but it's not one of the most important factors to it. Uh, and what we said was, we don't want to compete on that, because what we offer is fundamentally better. Now we may not be an overnight success and grow to $100 million in a year because we offer something for $35 right? Or the same prices. You could buy it at Wal Mart or target even lower in some cases. [17:48] No, what we said was, Let's just fundamentally focus on the core differentiations for the category, which is much better product more sizes, better brand that resonates with women of all sizes, shapes and sit in shades and then, lastly, await a shop that you don't have to go into a retail store on. That was a key differentiation for us in something uniquely unique to our category. Women don't enjoy shopping for this product in store. It's not something I do socially with their friends. It's not a fun experience and what we want. And also there's women everywhere eyes, women all over the country and in states that don't have any crossed yours, Uh, and so in small towns that are, you know, 500 miles from the closest mall. And we want to be able to reach all those women and offer them something just as great as the woman in New York City or San Francisco. And so the way we do that today is through a great website experience that's highly personalized and through something called fish Finder that we conceived of Fit Finder. [18:53] Through a variety of questions allows you to get, you know, for the most part the perfect fit down to the half cup size to date. We're very proud and sort of another kind of pinch me moment. Given that, you know, we still view ourselves a start up. 17 million women have taken Fit finder. Jason: [19:10] That's amazing. Uh, one of the things I really like about your story is it's always interesting to look at someone's original hypothesis for their business and how it has to evolve. Um, and I feel like you've had a bunch of evolution, like so as I understand it, when you originally launched the company, you had this hypothesis that, like the original broad buying experience, sucked, um, and that you know, this some version of this fit finder could be, ah, much more enjoyable way to find the perfect fit bra. But in the process of building that, you found out that bras in general don't tend to fit a significant segment of women. And so the half size thing was less your original hypothesis. But something that you discovered is you got to know customers in your space. Um, you found a great a great white space to address. Dave: [20:02] Well and 25% of our sales we have 80 plus size is 25% of our sales are in half sizes, on we estimate through our data, and we have one of the most comprehensive data sets in the world on this because of what we do and how we fit people. [20:22] 30% of women are should be in half cup size, right? And so it's that data. It's it's it's the holes in the data that we saw where our machine learning our other algorithms would say to us recommend to this woman, machine Learning would say this recommend to this woman 1/2 size. We kept seeing that over and over and over again before we came up with half sizes. And again, this was data that nobody had ever seen before. If you shopped him all, um, there is no data. I mean, maybe there's your credit card data and some some foot traffic data, but that's it. You don't data on her preferences in her size and body type etcetera. So we have this massive data set that kept growing. We kept seeing the holes in the data and kept scratching her head because the the algorithms would spit out errors and save us. We don't know what size to recommend to this customer. Help us train me. And we kept seeing this pattern over and over again and we said, Wow, there is as you said, a white space here. There's a large percentage of at least our customers which, as it grew, we started to realize was more, uh, you know, mapped closely to the United States who are 1/2 size who are in between cup that we should address in sort of one of our tag lines. Now his shoes of half sizes. Why shouldn't bras? And that just boils down the fundamental problem. [21:49] Why shouldn't we give customers what they want? Well, the reason why nobody had before and the reason why nobody else has been able to do it. It's twofold. One. You can't develop 1/2 cup size without the data set that we have. It's not about just splitting a B and A C in half. There's more nuances to it, and you need a fit model to be able to fit it on and develop product off of. We don't you know, for the most part, we don't use fit models at third Love. Secondly, in a retail base business you already constrained by footprint, you're already constrained by a stock room, right? Where for our category, there is a lot of inventory already. Let's say you have 30 sizes. You have 30 sizes in every style color variant, which requires a large stock room just to stock that in retail because you don't want somebody to walk out, you don't have their style, style or size preference. Um, in our case, reused warehouses. We have the Internet, so we can stock, you know, depending upon inventory costs, in holding costs and in warehouse space, we can stock almost an unlimited number of sizes. If we needed to, we won't. But we could, and so is your supplier exactly. Jason: [22:54] In case your supply chain guys are listening, You can relax now. Dave: [22:58] But the point is, we can do things that are important and are requested whether she's requesting it directly or indirectly by her data for the customer, we could give her what she wants. Instead of pushing her into a size that we have in a retail store, we could give her what we want and developed product way, way faster and new sizes because of that data set, and so that ability to do that with the Internet. The ability to use data in a really, really smart, powerful way is really what has allowed us to address a much larger portion of the market as an example. One of the largest companies out there, they only go up Thio. I think maybe a double D cup in store, right. That's because they're constrained by that by the shore we can offer. And so they can't go after a larger woman. They can't go after a larger and a larger part of the market, the larger part of the total addressable market or the TAM we can because of the Internet, because of warehousing because of our ability to use data. Jason: [23:55] I love it. And so that that customer intimacy in that direct customer data, um, enabled you to discover this opportunity and half sizes. Conversely, it sounds like when you started the company, you have a hypothesis that the camera, phone and computer vision would be, ah, revolutionary way for women to help fit themselves. Um, and it seems like today the fit guide is working phenomenally, but it's it's largely not a computer. Vision based was I'm curious. Like, Was there a learning that that that wasn't the right approach for women? Is that still the future? And it's just too early in the technology curve. What? You're your p O V on that? Dave: [24:37] Yeah. I mean, so you're right. I mean, we, uh That record. Jason: [24:37] Yeah. So, right, E let the record show I'm right. Dave: [24:47] Computervision and using a smartphone app to get fit was very, very novel for when we did it, we were operating off of a chipset. I phoned 45 That was probably 1/4 of the speed of what we operate today. Maybe even 1/10. And I don't know exactly with a with a camera camera optics that are far, far, far less powerful. Furthermore, open TV, which is an open source library for computer vision that we were also utilizing was nowhere near as advances it is. Now. We're building all of this in house again. We wanted toe always find a way to bridge the gap. So a woman didn't have to go into a store so we could reach a woman in Barrow, Alaska. For all those Barrow Alaska fans that are listening to this. Jason: [25:33] It's a big audience for us. Dave: [25:35] Barrow, Alaska is on the north slope of Alaska. And that's an example because there are, of course, amazing, amazing women that are there, and we want to be able to reach them. We want to be able to reach women everywhere in this country and prior to third love you needed to go into a store to do that. And, of course, all women over a certain age need to be wearing a bra or should be wearing a broad for the most part. So, um, we want to be able t o reach everyone that we possibly could. And so this smartphone app that we developed and a lot of technology, and today we have a number of patents on it, all of which have been granted on. The technology that we developed was really, really novel. But the problem was, the conversion process wasn't as simple as it needed to be. You couldn't be sitting on a bus to work and using the APP you couldn't be laying on the couch watching TV. Using that you could be laying in bed, doing it to be in front of a mirror, wearing wearing a tight fitting tank top, pulling your hair, pull your hair back, take your smart take the smartphone cover off, and then through the use of two photos and the smartphone itself was the reference object into the mirror. [26:42] We use the gyroscope for calibration. We use the flash. Recalibration was really, really novel we had hundreds of thousands of people that use it. We were Editor's choice in the APP store way. Want a lot of accolades and awards for it. We were very proud of but didn't work because the conversion process was too long and when it worked for people, it worked incredibly well, and women loved the experience. But we weren't growing as quickly as we needed Thio. We learned a lesson about conversion. Now that Data said, without those early mistakes, without building that app, we couldn't have used that initial data set to then Pivot and I talked about pivots earlier because they've been really important in our on our history and in our growth. We couldn't have pivoted into fit finder today. So those initial learnings about conversion, that initial data that we had, went into powering what is fit finder today, we never would have able to get those algorithms off the ground without that initial data set. Jason: [27:34] No, I totally see that. The, uh I am a hypothesis. Usually I'm wrong. Um, but the a lot of the smartphones now have actual distance measuring capability. Like, you know, it was on the front camera for facial I D. And so I keep waiting for the the version of that to be built into the back of the cameras. And I think when we get that, we'll get hyper accurate measurement, and I feel like for a lot of fit mint categories, that's gonna be a game changer. Dave: [28:02] Yeah, Jason, you're right. It's the true depth camera on the front of of of the latest versions of the iPhone is coming to the back. I had the technologists and very, very excited about that. And what we need to do as retailers or retailers is find ways to make it easy for her to shop from home and to not have to return a product. Our return rate is is incredibly low for the industry, but it's still hi, um uh, and higher than we would like it to be. And at the end of the day, for us, putting customers first is our is our most important core value internally at the company. And if we think of it through that lens, putting customers first, nobody likes have to return. Nobody likes to get a product that doesn't that doesn't work for them. Fit Finder while, while it is very accurate, doesn't work for everybody. And so someday we will take some of those new advancements on smartphones, pivot R i. P, including our patents, and build out what will be the next version of being able to get fit from home using a smartphone. It's very exciting. Jason: [29:03] Very cool. I will be looking forward to that. I do want to touch on the date a little bit. You referenced it a lot. And to me, it's one of the most important competitive advantages of the D to C model. Is that direct customer intimacy and the the competitive data you can gather about how your meeting customer needs air? Not so you know, you mentioned that that the first versions of that fit finder gave you a data set that taught you that the standard sizes didn't fit. I advise a lot of big established brands and a super calmer common conversation is should we have a direct to consumer model and my my general advices, your issue is less about whether you sell direct to consumers versus cell through wholesale. You're your problem is you need the customer data that those direct to consumer companies air generating. So if you're a traditional bra manufacturer, you sell. You brought a walmart and WalMart sells it to a consumer. You have no idea whether that customer was happy with the bra or ah, whether that that bra particularly well fit. And so the fact that you do have that data gives you ah, huge, defensible advantage versus the traditional apparel manufacturers. Dave: [30:15] Yeah, and I and I think, Look, everybody is in the data arms rates race today. Whether you're a traditional retailer, whether you sell car parts, everybody is focused on data on the one thing that we did differently. 1/3 love is we built this company from the ground up with a focus on data. Right. So we had the advantage that we had while we didn't have the resources, We don't have the capital of a large company. We had the start of hustle, and we had the foundation that we started from the ground up, which would be very hard to change if we were a well established business that was focused on using zeros and ones to our advantage. Jason: [30:50] Yeah. So let's let's pivot a little bit and talk about one of the big challenges I generally see with digitally native brands. So, um, in the modern era, uh, particularly with the advent of Facebook and Google and digital marketing, it's become much easier and cheaper to launch a company and have some initial success. So we look out there and there's a ton of of digital native brands, Um, that get out of the gate fast and, you know, grow to some size by cost, effectively advertising on Facebook. But in general ah, bunch of those D d C company's sort of plateau like they're they're hits a point where the next of eyeballs on Facebook or even more expensive than the ones you bought, um, and it becomes hard to profitably grow. So when we look at all the the D to see companies that get talked about a lot, a lot of them kind of hit this plateau, and it's been really hard for them to continue to grow. And I'm curious if a if you're worried about that at Third Love. If you've hit that plateau, um, if you have ah strategy to continue to get new customers and grow, you know, even as the the ad buying on Facebook gets more expensive and more competitive. Dave: [32:05] Sure. Well, we're always thinking about the challenges of scaling acquisition marketing on. We have a really great leader on our team now that spends all over time thinking about that. Marker 02 [32:18] We have a couple, uh, advantages, though one. We have very high gross margins. Uh, and it didn't used to be that way. In fact, our course Martin just be a lot lower. And we've been able to scale gross margins dramatically through improvements in our supply chain. And again. Supply chain is a huge differentiator in our category. It's the untold story of the large, successful businesses in the space is their dominance and supply chain. And so we've done a great job of scaling that which allow us A you know of the you know, when you buy a bra were able to spend that money, on the Delta from in gross margin of profit on things like marketing on things like data science and data engineering. So we can create a better experience, and that really provides us an advantage. Furthermore, the other advantage, which is an advantage for everybody in this space on no different for us is this is a highly recurring high repeat business. When a woman finds a bra that fits, even if she doesn't even like the brand, uh, she tends to stick with it for a long time. Jason: [33:21] And so from Analects standpoint, do you guys tend to look a customer lifetime value, like is that important? Dave: [33:22] You guys value customer. LTV is incredibly important to our business. We measure that, uh, it's unlike some of these other categories that you mentioned. It's not a one time purchase, right? If we do our job, and I'd like to think that we do our job 90 plus percent of the time I delivering a great product that fits in a really phenomenal customer experience, she will be our customer. I hope for a decade or more on that's inherent to the category, right? It just There's no reason to switch if you find something that fits, especially 1/2 size, obviously we have a distinct advantage of half sizes to nobody else offers that outside of half sizes. If we provide something that really is phenomenal, that exceeds all expectations that she loves, we provide a brand that she that resonates with her that speaks to her, not that speaks to her husband. We can really, hopefully keep her for a very long time, and that's our job, and that's what we're focused on. Eso. There's two sides, really our marketing strategy. One is acquiring new customers and having purchased us purchased with us before, and the second half is providing a great experience to our repeat recurring revenue customers. Jason: [34:34] That's awesome. Ah, I also I noticed that you want to pop up store, brick and mortar store in New York this year, and I think you also have a partnership with Bloomingdale's. If I'm not mistaken is, ah, brick and mortar, part of the the expansion strategy. Dave: [34:48] Well, we we haven't had a partnership with any other retailers in two years, so we don't the only place to buy third. Love is through third love, so we're we're fully direct in terms of our retail store. [35:02] We, uh, unlike other director consumer players that built stores very quickly after they got started. We waited almost seven years before we launch our first store, and we wanted to prove a number of things out before we went into retail one. We operate in a category that women don't want to shop in a retail store for generally right. It's unlike other county, unlike apparel. Unlike a number of other direct markets where the experience just is better, you know you're dealing with the fit of pants or the fit of a blouse. These are things that, frankly, it's a lot easier to try and a couple sizes in a couple outfits and figure out what works for you in store. I have to deal with the return. We operate in a category that's not that way. So we really wanted to prove out a great customer experience to put all of our resources, all of our energy into creating that customer experience. The challenge with retail is it is very, very labor intensive and very time intensive. It requires an entirely new skill set, and we're in the early days for learning that skill Set 1/3 love. But so far, the learnings in our one concept store in Soho haven't really successful. We're really, really happy with what we've learned in that store, and that will prove on that will be a part of our strategy going forward what we've built out there. But it's not gonna be the strategy of blanketing the entire country with as many stories as we can. We want to create an experience that is a creative to the overall online business. That's our objective. Jason: [36:24] That is faring well before the watching the continue evolution of that strategy. Um, I want to pivot for a second and and, ah, talk about the controversial topic from this week. So you you referenced your big competitor a number of times and we're all friends here. That's l brands Victoria Secret. And if I have the story right, you guys sort of ended up inadvertently in a feud with Victoria's Secret. I feel like, ah, one time CMO. They're sort of like shockingly called you guys out and you got into a little bit of a public dialogue. Fast forward to this week. I feel like you guys definitively one that because I L brands is selling Victoria Secret at evaluation much lower than their peak. And the narrative about this decline of Victoria's Secret is largely that they lost their audience and weren't weren't appealing to customers. And when brands like third Love that talk directly to women emerge that it became impossible for them to compete. So congrats on crushing Ah ah, formidable competitors. Do I have that story right? Dave: [37:35] Well, you know, Jason, you said earlier that we've definitively one that, and I don't agree. We will when? When every woman in America is wearing something that fits her and wears a brand that resonates with her and speaks to her, and that she's not ashamed of wearing or receiving the catalog from a brand that her six year old daughter I have a six and 1/2 year old daughter, or her 12 year old teenager who's getting into her first bra isn't ashamed to be shopping on in, or wearing Ah, brand that she doesn't hide the catalog or hide the pretty pink sparkly bag because she's too embarrasses. Have anybody at work see that she was shopping there? That's when we'll win. So again, we're really just at the beginning. We've got so much more work to do In order to do that, I wouldn't necessarily say that we are in a feud with that company. [38:36] We are building something that's really different. We're building something that really is the antithesis of what they built in every way. Online verse offline. The brand is very, very different. Everyone knows that. Who is familiar with with what we're doing. The number of sizes we offer is 2 to 3 acts larger than theirs. So inherently we can go after a much larger portion of the market I. [38:59] And we offer a a really data based experience that that enables me to shop from the comfort of home so sort of securely uncomfortably, and that's that's very different. And so we have so much more work to do there. I think that L brands has created there many of their own problems on, and I don't think that we deserve the credit for it. Actually, we deserve credit for changing the narrative out there, but we don't deserve credit for their downfall. And, um, you know, I hope that, you know, competition's a good thing, and that's what makes America great on. I look forward to hopefully that them emerging as a stronger competitors because having some competition is good and them changing their narrative, changing their brand, changing the types of models that they show is a really good thing for the world on. They have a large voice, so I'm hopeful that they can and I look forward to competing with them in the future. I think they've got a lot of work to do. They were bought by private equity for those that don't know and bought by a private equity firm known for sort of taking a cleaver knife and chopping things apart. I hope for all of the amazing women that work there, and I'm sure there are. I know there are many amazing women that work there that too many jobs aren't lost, so I'm hopeful of that. But third, love is hiring so well stated, very magnanimous of you. Jason: [40:18] Very cool. Well, that's ah. Very well. Say, did. In very magnanimous of you, I do know that we can both agree to the extent that third love does deserve credit. Is Heidi and not you. Dave: [40:21] I do know that we can both agree to extend that love does. It's not, you know, 100%. Jason: [40:29] In case she's listening. I just wanted to make sure. Um So listen, we're coming up on time. I do want to get one other question before we do one at a time. Um, if you and I get in that time traveling DeLorean and fire up the flux capacitor and jump sort of five years in the future from today, do you have a vision for how the shopping experience might change? I mean, is our store's gonna be gone, and we're all gonna be buying her stuff from direct to consumer. Like what? What's the consumer landscape looked like five years from now? Mr. Fancy MBA xvc successful entrepreneur. Dave: [41:07] Well, I unfortunately, based upon inexpensive education, that probably wasn't really worth very much. I still can't predict the future. Uh, so I think that where we're headed is a world that is truly on the channel, where there is a lot less retail, and the retail that wins is retail, that is differentiated. That looks very different from it. It looks today that has a digital experience built into the retail store. Experiences are what people want. They are looking for more than just product. They can get that same product online, the exact same product you can buy in a store today you can always buy online. I don't know of any examples that you can't are very few examples. And so I think that the world in the world of commerce online in the future doesn't look all that different than it looks today. I think we will see sort of the evolution of the smartphones that we all carry around as processing power grows and optics get a lot smarter and the camera on the front. [42:16] Those sorts of things will enable technology companies like ours to actually be able to create really great at home experiences to bridge the gap. But retail still won't go anywhere. And the retail that wins the retail that would be highly differentiated and creates a great experience in store that again is a creative to that online experience. But the Allman Experience has to lead because that's what consumers want. Jason: [42:37] That is a great advice, and that's gonna be a great place to leave it, because it's happened again. We've used up our allotted time. Dave: [42:38] Great advice, a great place to be because it's happening. We've used up our A lot of times. Jason: [42:44] Um, you did mention that you were hiring It turns out there's a bunch of great e commerce pros and digital marketers that was in the podcast. Is that a particular geography that you're looking for talent in our. Dave: [42:45] You did mention that you were hiring It turns out there's a bunch of great commerce frozen digital marketers. Listen, podcast, is that a particular geography that you're looking for? Third love is we're about 300 people, and we're headquartered in San Francisco. We are hiring mostly in San Francisco for the digital marketing pros that you mentioned, so please reach out to us. We're at careers dot third love dot com on dhe. Let us know kind of what you're looking for. If you see any jobs that sparked your interest, whether you're in the Bay Area or somewhere else, we're certainly open to having people relocate to the barrier. Jason: [43:23] Awesome. We will put that link in the show notes. So no need to write that down of your driving. David's been a real pleasure. I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks very much. Dave: [43:30] Thistles. Superfund, Jason, thanks so much. And thank you to all the listeners out there and thank you to all the customers of Third Love and the future customers. Jason: [43:35] The customers and the future. Absolute. Look forward to having human down. Thank you so much for your support of our business. Dave: [43:38] So we look forward to having you and thank you so much for your support of our business. We are just getting started. Jason: [43:45] That is awesome. And until next time, happy commercing.

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Greg Zakowicz is a Senior Commerce Marketing Analyst at Oracle NetSuite /Ep2734

#12minconvos

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2020 12:22

Previous Episode 1574 Greg Zakowicz is a Senior Commerce Marketing Analyst at Oracle NetSuite, telling compelling stories of how retailers are growing their business with email marketing. With nearly 15 years of experience in email, mobile and social media marketing, Zakowicz knows the retail industry and its challenges, staying on top of the latest trends by leveraging deep insight into the marketing spectrum. His subject matter expertise stems from his experience providing commerce marketers, including numerous Internet Retailer Top 1000 clients, with in-depth analysis of their marketing programs, recommendations for improvement, best practice support and implementation guidance and execution. He has previously been retained as an e-commerce and retail industry expert witness for trial, issuing a report on the state of the retail industry in relation to consumer behavior trends. Zakowicz is a frequent speaker at e-commerce events such as IRCE, eTail West, eTail Canada, Fashion Digital NY, Magento Live Australia, SuiteWorld, and ROI Revolution Summit. He has been published and quoted by top retail and marketing publications, including Multichannel Merchant, Total Retail, Internet Retailer, Apparel Magazine, and Forbes. Greg is the host of NetSuite’s award-winning Commerce Marketer Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter at @WhatsGregDoing. Website: www.GregZakowicz.com Support us on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/12minconvos Listen to another #12minconvo

commerce senior netsuite oracle netsuite marketing analyst irce etail west suiteworld

EP210 - Amazon Go Grocery and News

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2020 56:02

EP210 - Amazon Grocery and News Episode 210 is a recap of the weeks news, including eTailWest recap, Amazon Go Grocery, Walmart new programs, impact of Coronavirus, and retailer earnings reports. eTail West recap Amazon Amazon Go Grocery Amazon Grocery Micro Fulfillment Amazon Basics Bedding Pop-Up Jason's Forbes article on digital grocery: The Race To Reinvent Grocery: How Amazon, Walmart And More Are Trying To Conquer The Space Coronavirus US malls ‘will be hit hard’ if coronavirus worsens, study finds Walmart Walmart+ Walmart Fulfillment Service (WFS) Merchandising Reorg Other Saks - CEO Helena Foulkes to step down Nordstrom - Erik Nordstrom named sole CEO L Brands - Sells Victoria Secret, Les Wexler steps down Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 210 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 4th, 2020. 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. Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this episode being recorded on Wednesday March 4th 2020 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 Scott show listeners there has been a ton going on in the world of retail. Amazon and e-commerce so tonight we are going to focus on the news for we do that Jason you before coronavirus hit you had done a little bit of traveling and now I think your wings are probably clipped a little bit. But you were a Tito West. Jason: [1:01] I was it was a tough duty to go to Palm Desert in the middle of a Chicago Street snow storm. Scot: [1:08] Toughen did you bring the family or you left them back there to deal with that while you were your sunbathing. Jason: [1:15] I did the the family did stay at home they they were certainly welcome to attend but I think they chose are my four and a half year old certainly did not choose to stay home but my wife chose to stay in Chicago, for her work in life apparently are kind of a big deal. Scot: [1:38] Yeah cool how is this. Jason: [1:38] I have some big news for you with my son those God I'm kind of depressed. I feel like my son my four and a half year old son is turning to the dark side of the force. Scot: [1:51] Everyone goes through a face there's a the the dark side is there's a big draw there. Jason: [1:59] That yeah I he's begging for like Darth Vader and kylo ren action figures and I drove him to school this morning and we had to sing Imperial March theme song over and over again. Scot: [2:13] Nice that's some quality parenting. Jason: [2:15] Yeah he totally has it down. Scot: [2:17] As long as he's in the universe and not you're not talking All-Star Trekkie then he can be on the dark side. Jason: [2:22] To my knowledge he does not know that Star Trek exist yet. Scot: [2:26] Good good. Jason: [2:27] But so yeah so that aside I did get to go to e-tail West last week which was a pleasure listeners may already know that because we already published one of the shows from e-tail I got to do an interview with Owen Comerford who's the CEO of Moose Jaw. Smooth jazz a great outdoor apparel retailer that was oddly purchased by Walmart a couple years ago. Scot: [2:56] Cool and he's stayed on to run de. Jason: [2:58] Yeah it's Moosa is famous for their clever and quirky marketing and oh and is actually the, the owner of that marketing so for a long time Owen was the CMO and was responsible for a lot of the campaign's that made him famous and then Owens boss the the CEO of left to go. Run Blue Nile and Owen was promoted to CEO so. Doing a good job there a Moose Jaw and then he has a side hustle Walmart also made him the sort of general merchandise manager for outdoor for all of Walmart. Yeah so that was a good conversation and they do clever marketing campaigns like if you're afraid to break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend call us and we'll break up with him for you. Scot: [3:51] Yeah never rabid kind of audience that rates things and is really into the outdoor stuff and and really engaged right. Jason: [4:02] Yeah yeah they're super smart about engaging their customers and they behind the scenes they have a really powerful 360 degree view of the customer and all that all that good stuff so. They definitely have a bunch of best practices. Somewhat aided by the fact that they're relatively small prior to other Walmart acquisition yeah so that was a. Great conversation he gave one of the Keynotes and then we got him in a conversation and then probably next week we'll publish a conversation I had with Dave Spector who's one of the cofounders of third love which is a. Highly successful direct to consumer or women's lingerie primarily bra. Manufacturer and reseller and we'll probably talk a little bit more about third love in part of the new segment later but so that's a, a teaser for now. [4:55] And then you know there's a lot of content a t-tail there's actually multiple tracks going on so you kind of can't go to everything. And I did have some duties. To record some podcasts and some other things while we're there so I didn't get to see everything but a couple of the just quick standouts for me, there was a guy who I hadn't seen before who I'm I'm afraid I'm gonna mispronounce his name Robert petrich. Who's in Industry the retail industry manager for Facebook. [5:28] And so he was talking a lot about Instagram check out which is a topic of interest to me so he kind of had this interesting framework he said hey Facebook, we think about these three main phases of the customer Journey the discovery phase the purchase phase and the post-purchase phase. And essentially between Facebook and Instagram we feel like we dominate it Discovery and we're doing well and have a lot of good products in there, but we really think I were deficient in the purchase phase and the post-purchase phase and so that's a major focus of. His effort and so like through that framework Instagram check out is. There you know biggest but still early initiative in purchase, and so he kind of gave a Nike case study of Instagram check out where Nike partnered with this, fear of God brand and they launched a new shoe for Cyber Monday and they sold completely sold out of the shoe and in one minute, um and he sort of highlighted that that a number of primarily Street Wear Brands women's fashion brands and Beauty Brands are having a very high degree of success using Instagram check out and he announced that, in the process of expanding that program which was. [6:47] Interesting to me because they've been in this beta for a long time and they haven't allowed new new brands into the program so it was good to hear that there. Expanding that program and then he also pitched something I guess I'm a little more skeptical of but you know he had at least one good case study using Facebook Messenger as a post purchase tool. So the case study there with Sephora has sort of natural language appointment booking through Facebook Messenger so if you want to, book an appointment with a beauty consultant you can kind of do it using natural language on Facebook messenger and he in his case study he was saying that they have an 11% higher booking rate on Facebook Messenger than they do the Sephora website or any other support of touch points. So he was kind of pitching it for that I to me like. There's so many Communication channel channels now that they're sort of a signal to noise problem across all these channels but. [7:52] That that was kind of interesting I got to host a couple panels so I did a direct-to-consumer panel on how brands are. Able to capture customer data and improve their products and services and so there were three kind of interesting execs on that panel Megan Whitman who's the chief digital officer Campari Beauty, Kyle Hoff who is the CEO of a direct-to-consumer furniture company called Floyd which is kind of the the online Akia if you will and on kit Patel who's the VP of merchandising at boxed and I was super sad that you weren't there because I know boxed plays a major role In Stocking The get spiffy snack Shelf. Scot: [8:38] Absolutely yeah. Jason: [8:39] And so they had some sort of interesting insights on cat talked a lot about, boxed own private label and how they're able to leverage the other customer data they get and feedback they get to sort of shape the the offering for. For their private label products so that was interesting and then I did kind of a. Predict the future panel with with two guys Mike apostille who's a co-founder and CEO of a. Emil company called factor which is surprisingly big much bigger than I realize they sell a hundred thousand meals a week so these are. Just reheat any meals at home for whatever whatever your nutritional information you know interest or Diet is. And they it's super interesting because they do a bunch of post-meal surveys, they get a really high response rate and so they do a lot of like Micro Data about which meals customers who liked and what they liked and didn't like and they really use that to shape there. Their future meal planning and then Bob Bennett who's the VP and General Merchandise general manager of consumer engagement at Petco. Um and Bob had some interesting insights but I'm also super nice to Bob because Petco's based in San Diego and so have an eye towards my retirement job being some kind of e-commerce gig in San Diego. Scot: [10:08] Yes hopefully Bob's listening. Jason: [10:11] Yeah exactly and then I got to give a keynote on direct-to-consumer on the third day and so I took the opportunity to totally poo poo the direct-to-consumer channel. So I want I want I want recap the whole thing it was a short presentation but you know they're all these these direct to Consumer presenters and there's all these case studies about these direct consumer companies so I kind of highlighted the fact that hey, there are all these different companies that track direct-to-consumer companies so I picked one the interactive advertising Bureau so it's a, Trade Organization of digital advertisers called, usually they go by IAB and IAB publishes this list called the IAB 250 which is. Their opinion in the 250 most important direct to Consumer companies to watch so I pulled all 250 companies and said hey how many of those companies have sold at least a hundred million dollars a year, ever and how many of the 250 would you guess are over a hundred million in sales. Scot: [11:18] 25 Jason: [11:22] I warned you in rehearsal that you'd have to guess 25 toy reasonable guess but way too high seven of the 250 companies have sold over a hundred million dollars a year. Scot: [11:30] Holy cow. Jason: [11:31] Yeah and only two have sold a billion dollars a year and those two by the way are Stitch fix and chewy, both of whom primarily sell other people's stuff so they are technically direct-to-consumer and they do both have their own brand but they mostly are, and online wholesaler not a vertically integrated direct-to-consumer company and one of them chewy is. Hugely successful on the revenue side but while the unprofitable so of these hundred and fifty companies one company that sells a billion dollars a year profitably and you know a bunch of these companies are, unicorns from the private Equity valuation standpoint but but very few of them have have meaningful market share at the moment not to say they won't ever but it like it's sometimes easy to get caught up in the in the hype and sort of overvalue where they're at right now. Scot: [12:27] Did you know that chewy and Stitch fix sell other people's stuff direct-to-consumer. Jason: [12:34] I did know that but so does Walmart. Scot: [12:36] It's right there it's right there it is still direct-to-consumer. Jason: [12:40] Yeah I mean isn't every retailer direct-to-consumer. Scot: [12:42] Yeah Staples has a B2B piece. Jason: [12:48] This is true but director business. Scot: [12:52] Cool seems like you were kind of running the show over there you're going to be like the you're going to be on putting together the whole thing here before we know it. Jason: [13:00] Yeah if they're listening winter events in Palm Desert I'm in. Scot: [13:04] Said the Chicago. Cool sounds like it was a fun trip and you get to flex the old speaking muscles which is always good it wouldn't be adjacent Scotch oh if we didn't kick off with a little bit of Amazon news. Jason: [13:25] Design news your margin is their opportunity. Scot: [13:34] So let's start with your favorite topic Jason which is grocery there's been I've seen a lot of interesting topics around Grocery and I saw you actually wrote an article about this in Forbes so give us an update on what's going on in the Amazon grocery line. Jason: [13:49] Yeah yeah this is awesome week for grocery so a couple of things came out, last week right before e-tail Amazon opened a new Amazon go format in Seattle this called Amazon GO Grocery and so. Traditional Amazon go stores are these just walk out stores, you go in you take your products you walk out and Amazon uses cameras to track you and charge you for what you took I've always said that well well their disguises convenience stores that Amazon ghost orders are really, restaurants because they're primarily selling Ready-to-Eat food for business people to have for lunch and in fact secretly if you dive in all of Amazon's propaganda for go like they call them restaurants so this is a new format that uses that same just walk out technology for an actual grocery store so it's quite a bit larger it's five times larger than a ghost or so it goes stores about five is exaggeration a ghost or is about 1,500 to 2,000 square foot this is a 5,000 square foot store this this store has about 10,000 skews so five times as many skus as a a ghost or had and the skus include things like, a butcher shop with with meats and organic produce. [15:19] The go didn't have and that you know potentially are harder for the camera to recognize. So a big evolution in the Amazon Go technology and a new grocery concept for Amazon so that alone would have been super exciting and I would put just one caveat on that while it's a lot bigger than a traditional ghost or it actually still is small by grocery store standards so that's not a huge amount of skus and that's not a big footprint for an American grocery store that's about the size of it the typical European Grocery Store. And I was super curious how they were going to do things like sell bulk items like how do you sell Apples by the pound. Um using the just walk out technology in the answer is you don't they're they're selling everything by the Aegis so, yeah so you pay per apple or / banana rather than by weight so it's so interesting. Like a shift they obviously did for their convenience not the customers but it'll be interesting to see if customers like that alternative model or not. Scot: [16:26] Some chatter were some guy said he defeated the camera did you see that. Jason: [16:30] Yeah and I almost wondered if he's a podcast listener so a ton of journalists got invited to the grand opening, and one of the things that I always pointed out about a one of the problems in scaling Amazon go is there's things you can't do in this camera-based or like have a public restroom. And the reason you can't is because you can't put cameras in the restroom and so then you have a problem someone scans their way into the store using the mobile app and so you know who they are and then you're tracking them around the store with a cameras and you keep track of what they bought and then you know when they walk out you charge them for those purchases will if you let them walk into a public restroom in the middle of that shopping trip, you lose that your identification Mark for that customer and so you know one of the problems you have is go to a bigger store and it's more a higher expectation that you're going to a restroom so turns out this Amazon go store does have a restroom and so this clever journalist figured out yeah I'll walk into the restroom I'll see I'll carry two jackets with me and so I'll change jackets in the restroom so I come out with a different color jacket and sure enough by doing that he was able to steal all his items and wasn't charged for them. Scot: [17:45] Was he arrested. Jason: [17:46] No no I mean oh well at least not at the time of publishing his article. I always thought that I always assume the solution would be that you have to leave the store to use the restroom and then you have to scan your way back in with your phone. Yeah but so that's an interesting little little Edge case another Edge case that seems like they're trying to solve is in a ghost or you can only shop alone, so if you walk in with your family they each have to have a. Their own app or have a separate cart and now with this go grocery store you can actually scan in multiple people and then any items taken by any of those people. You get charged for and group shopping actually is a big deal so it makes sense. Scot: [18:35] So the jacket thing can't they use eventually face recognition would do that or is there a reason they're not doing faces for for privacy reasons. Jason: [18:44] The real answer is I don't know they're you know, you could imagine that like I imagine they are using face and then they're like hashing it and you know just using it for that that session so they're not storing it or doing anything with it but. They just don't force you to give like a face profile like you know what I mean like you're naturally walking through the store so they have to be able to track you from multiple angles and so I imagine they use a lot of attributes of your appearance to track you and obviously if your back is to all the cameras the facial recognition wouldn't work so they can't exclusively rely on facial recognition. Scot: [19:22] But you scan your app it's logged in so they know if let's say they do scan your face they knew who Jason is and your kind of assuming they don't store it but maybe they do and I don't know. Jason: [19:35] Yeah I don't know these are all educated again you can imagine ways they could solve it right so it's it's not a deal-breaker it's just harder but so Props on Amazon they're moving the concept for further when they originally invented the idea of just walk out store they had a grocery store in mind and with the technology available at the time it was too hard, so now it's become easier they also said that they've, significantly reduce the cost I imagine it still super expensive but I believe them that the cost is going down but I was almost more excited about a much lower profile. Revelation that came out this last week at Amazon we've been talking about Amazon opening a. A alternative grocery store that's not a Whole Foods grocery store that's a full-size grocery store in Los Angeles and it's been under construction for a while people have walked by and then. Um I want to say Bloomberg got access to the store and got to visit the store before it opened and the big surprise to everyone is oh there's not a lot of digital Innovations and it mostly is a very traditional grocery store layout. [20:53] Um so this is a 33,000 square foot store so that's a legitimate Us full supermarket. And it was kind of interesting that it was you know didn't have a lot of digital shopping Innovations in it, I have assumed for a long time that it was going to be lower price point groceries and targeted it more value oriented customers than. Then Whole Foods but a clever blog called Hungry TV h n gr y TV, um sort of track down the architectural plans for this store and they uncovered something super interesting that 7,200 square feet of this 33,000 square foot store. Are dedicated to a micro fulfillment center so what this is is. [21:50] Robotic grocery picking machine and like the brand name is even on the floor plan so this is a Michigan company called de mantequilla. Which which make micro fulfillment centers for grocery stores and so very clearly this new Amazon concept is going to have a lot of groceries stored in this robotic system that then automatically picks them for the customer, and so we don't know exactly how this will work yet but one model is customers go to the grocery store do their own shopping and take home their groceries. [22:24] For deliveries they use this automated picking system to more cost effectively pick the orders and deliver them to you. And that alone would be interesting that that is a huge Trend in grocery but another alternative would be. You shop for certain items yourself in the grocery store where like individual selections important so you want to pick your own, pork chops and you want to pick your own fresh produce, but you really just want a bag of Oreos and all the bags Oreos are the same so there's no reason to push a cart by Oreo Island grab Oreos, when you can just like build a list on your phone and have the robot fill the cart for you so, the fact that this this micro fulfillment center is built into this new Amazon store is very interesting and that to me does make it. Much more revolutionary grocery store than maybe the Bloomberg journalists realized when they they got the walkthrough so I'm, and that sort is likely going to open imminently so I'm super excited about that, and that kind of prompted me to write this article in Forbes about the the great grocery Wars and how Amazon Walmart and Kroger are sort of battling for the hearts and mind of, digital grocery Shoppers in the US so I'll put a link to my article in the show notes of anyone wants to Deep dive into what's going on in digital grocery right now. Scot: [23:49] Very cool and another Amazon news we're going to talk about coronavirus but since we're talking about Amazon they did have a big travel freeze which was which was interesting and then a lot of companies have pre announced that they're going to have a rough q1 due to the virus so for example apple and Microsoft both pre announced that they probably would miss their numbers due to supply chain issues and then I don't know why Microsoft would. That was kind of weird when I guess how about any other Amazon news that you've been tracking. Jason: [24:24] Yeah a few things so there's a lot of Buzz yesterday about another new store format that at Amazon opened journalists found a pop-up store in Seattle that was focused on Amazon Basics bedding. So this is like their version of the Casper mattress. And like that is interesting to me I actually think the journalist kind of misinterpreted what they were seeing so there actually have been I want to say. Five Amazon pop-up stores that have opened in the last three months and Amazon used to have hundreds of pop-up stores. They famously closed them all and then they quietly reopen six of them and five or six of them and they all have these rotating themes so one month the popups might have been about, audible books and the next month they might have been about, mama bear food and the current month's theme for these pop-up stores is amazonbasics bedding and so what I think is new is they added a seventh. Location for the pop-up which is. [25:37] So that's kind of interesting one that is more interesting to me and I know you being a fulfillment geek would be excited about is, they also announced that they had opened a new kind of fulfillment center and I want to say they've opened four of these, and this is Kyle call it a tweener fulfillment center. This is a fulfillment center that holds a hundred thousand items, closer to population centers so a true Amazon fulfillment center is like a million square feet and holds, millions of products this is a hundred thousand square foot store that holds a hundred thousand items and as a result of these things they're able to guarantee 5 hour delivery on a bunch of product so it's kind of like. Amazon Prime now on steroids and they've opened them in Phoenix Philadelphia Dallas in Orlando. Scot: [26:36] Very cool yeah Prime now are very small so that I have. Jason: [26:40] Like 20 thousand items. Scot: [26:41] Yeah 5,000 square feet interesting so you know. It almost feels like the next phase of prime one day is prime same day so feels like they're they're laying the groundwork for that under the guise of it that'd be the ultimate kind of a head fake is you know. Tell Wall Street they're continuing with prime one day and then at becomes Prime same day without a huge amount of new investment that would be interesting. Jason: [27:08] Yeah and part of me and I may have this wrong but I sort of imagined there that those two things are almost synergistic that essentially they said like hey. To honor our one day we need to stay you know it's more cost-effective to Stage the most popular items closer to the customer and so they they sort of design these new fulfillment centers to too, increase profitability and service level for the, Amazon Prime one day and then as they did that they go oh and by the way there's a subset of customers that we can have an even better service level now that we've done this right and so why wouldn't we offer, you know faster same day delivery to customers whom we. Scot: [27:52] Yeah very cool. Jason: [27:54] So yeah those are I guess where my last little Amazon tidbits. Scot: [27:59] I brought up the coronavirus let's let's kind of talk about that because it's an unpleasant topic but we need to kind of think about how is this going to impact everything for our listeners here so first of all kind of this is kind of coming in waves if you will so when we first heard about this the main concern was supply chain so and you know that Apple pronouncements when it really kind of caught onto my radar it was pretty early there and that's because the virus initiated in China and if you have a lot of Chinese components than it's going to impact you my initial thought was there's a lot of Chinese stuff sold on Amazon I wonder how they're going to get impacted one of my one of my favorite analyst con Sebastian he actually kind of said you know because they have this Marketplace there's always multiple offers from those products so it's almost kind of like, yeah you don't really have a single source so so by having the marketplace model Amazon in an interesting way is almost kind of, D single point of failure did supply chain whereas an apple conversely has because of the components and controlling complete vertical ization of everything they have a lot of single points of failure in China so that was interesting and then he also mentioned. [29:20] You actually kind of came out and came out with a list of companies who would be hit the most from this but then what I want to talk about is the ones that would do best in Amazon was on that list it was very counterintuitive to what I was thinking and his argument was also on there was like Peloton Netflix obviously Zoom some of those you kind of thought about but his whole idea is that based on what we've seen in other countries when there is a large outbreak, people go into he calls it cocoon mode so that's an interesting theory is you know if people are having to kind of self quarantine on their houses to avoid being in crowds what does that mean, and his whole point is real you're going to still need stuff you're not going to want to go to the grocery store where presumably, people have been in there touching all the products and things you're going to want a cleaner supply chain to your house which means or e-commerce which is benefits Amazon so I thought that was an interesting take. Jason: [30:14] Yeah no for sure and I feel like the the most like, direct example is yeah so it's great for Peloton and it's bad for SoulCycle right like you don't want to go to a physical place and take a class with 30 other people but you'd rather workout at home and in that case once you buy a Peloton you're locked into the Peloton so it's not like, you just for God you know you skip something for a month and then you're going to go back to it after the, the the virus updates, you know if you're you you in many cases go through a one-way door to make some purchase decision to do something at home versus out in public and so like it could have some long-term impacts, and they're just all these angles to this but like I'm with you the the first announcements coronavirus started showing up in a bunch of earnings reports and it wasn't retailers it was manufacturers and the interesting thing was it was ones that obviously have supply chain dependencies like like apple that makes a lot of the product in in China, but it was also like companies that make their product in the US are still dependent on ingredients from China so I want it was like Coca-Cola has made in the US but it uses aspartame that's made in China and so, you know not surprising in the global economy. [31:44] We the the world supply chain is very dependent on China so potentially impact there and uh you know just a ton of factories. Shut down they're actually starting to open up again but I think the interesting thing is this kind of juxtaposition that, some business like in some ways this benefits businesses right so in the u.s. right now, um where the the fear probably outpaces the real risk you have a lot of quote aggressive shopping unquote and all these retailers are selling four times as much paper towels and disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer is they ever had before in some retailers have now said that the, the sales increases there will be material. [32:34] Which is interesting, they all have lean Supply chains and they're all running out of that stuff and so I kind of feel like like. [32:43] There's a pro and a con to that. But then our friends at coresight did a survey and ask a bunch of customers if their shopping behaviors might change as a result of. Concerns over coronavirus and not shockingly a significant percentage of customers said like 25% said they already are avoiding going to public places and fifty percent said that they definitely would have things got worse and so you know the premise is, if you're a mall owner you know this this is certainly bad for you a bunch of retards that said they've already started to see, um persistent traffic declines if you're a retailer at an airport you've already been decimated because air travels way down and so the traffic to those airport stores. [33:40] Is way down but then again the cocooning could potentially be an upside for some businesses so if you're launching a digital grocery service, and your biggest problem is that a significant portion of the US consumers haven't tried ordering their groceries online yet. You know it probably is pretty appealing if you're afraid to go to the supermarket because of all the people there it's probably pretty appealing to try your first delivery order and if that is a good experience for you. You you might be inclined to use that service regularly and Scot I don't know if you knew this but there's kind of a precedent for that. [34:23] Um so. The second largest e-commerce site in China is of course JD.com JD.com basically exists because of the SARS epidemic in China so, so prior to SARS. Jingdong Trading Company is selling CD-ROM drives at electronics bazaars and Shanghai and when SARS hit, all these bazaars closed and the founder of jingdong trading had a bunch of inventory of the CD-ROM drives it couldn't sell and so because there was this kind of prolonged quarantine, he started trying to sell the CD-ROM drives on bulletin boards and was so successful in doing that that he launched a website JD.com, and they of course become one of the biggest e-commerce players in the world. Scot: [35:16] I did not know that. Jason: [35:17] Yeah so who knows potentially there will be some new. Businesses emerging from this sort of temporary cocooning and the the other category that I feel like is gonna like potentially be decimated by this. The on-premise restaurant business because they've already been under a lot of stress consumers are consuming a lot more restaurant meals off-premise they're mostly getting delivered by these. These delivery marketplaces and the the economics for the restaurants themselves are horrible when this happens. But now if people are cocooning more and going out less they're likely to order even more meals for home delivery and that's that's going to be a disaster for the on-prem restaurant business. Scot: [36:04] Cool how about I know you were bummed that some of the events were canceled too. Jason: [36:09] Yeah there's a little controversy there so like that. For those of us in the industry like this is a busy event time of the year and so there you know a number of big events have been canceled Google and Facebook both canceled their developer conferences, Adobe just canceled their big customer conference in Las Vegas, and we're about two weeks away from shoptalk which is a you know one of the best shows in our industry, is still scheduled to go on in Las Vegas and I'll be honest I'm grateful I'm not one of the event organizers and I'm super curious what they're going to do because. It's increasingly looking like it's not going to be viable to have this show like tons of attendees and speakers work for companies that are that are limiting you know non-essential travel. And I'm sure a lot of people just have concerns over you know traveling to a big event in Las Vegas so it's going to be. Interesting to see whether we have a shop talk this year or not. Scot: [37:11] Yeah we will see are you going. Jason: [37:16] If they have it I probably will go you know we have to see like. It is funny if you remember shoptalk sold this year so. The fact the founder of shop talk already seemed super smart right like he had flipped a couple trade shows he sold shop talk for a particularly good valuation. And you know he built a great show they did a really good job they grew rapidly for three years and then he sold it and that already looked brilliant now it looks. Unbelievable. Scot: [37:50] Genius. Jason: [37:51] Because the new owner that paid like a pretty rich premium for the show is now stuck in this position like. Do we give all of our exhibitors their money back or do we try to have a show that you know potentially is going to be the worst year ever for the show as you may remember they're doing a novel thing for the show they're having only female speakers and so from my perspective, it will be a tragedy to have only female speakers than have no one show up because everyone's afraid of the coronavirus so I just I just think there's a lot of. Issues Tangled Up In whether or not not they at whether or not they have the show and I'm glad it's not my call. Scot: [38:30] Yeah wonder how so you know a channel visor we do a show and you commit you know, years in advance and you you spend a lot on the show and you have to guarantee hotel room so I wonder I wonder if a viral outbreak is kind of a reason to be able to get out of that. Jason: [38:48] Yet so I don't know if they're contractually obligated to but from a Goodwill standpoint most companies are having to let customers out of their commitment so the I mean I had a non-refundable room for for Adobe and they refunded that like Adobe basically sells out the Venetian and the Palazzo and so I imagine those hotels are going to be empty now, because they you know they weren't marketing rooms to other people for that week and I'm sure shoptalk would be the same problem at Mandalay Bay, United Airlines just announced that you know they're waiving all change and cancellation fees and they're actually cutting back their schedule so all these travel and hospitality companies you know are really bearing the brunt of the cost for this so it's a it's a mess. Scot: [39:38] Yeah yeah it's can be interesting the we don't really talk about travel on the show but it will kind of Ripple to our world because Google has pretty high concentration of travel advertisers social media guys I think are pretty small at I would guess I think Google is like the 15 to 20% range they have kind of four or five verticals that are each 20%, retail being one of them maybe politics there's kind of a weird thing that it actually could be okay that it's a political year maybe that'll help them. It's gonna be interesting to see how these things were blowout and other places. Jason: [40:15] Yeah yeah for sure and obviously not not something that people plant or budgeted for. Scot: [40:20] Cool another news item I wanted to get your opinion this our resident Walmart guy is this Walmart plus kind of Amazon Prime killer I can't tell feels underwhelming but I wanted to see if there's something on this there. Jason: [40:36] Yeah so side now you're calling me the Walmart guy but you're the one that camps out overnight to get the new Star Wars toys at Walmart. Scot: [40:45] Yeah but I've been to Bentonville once how many times have you been. Jason: [40:49] Yeah more than once Fair Point yeah so Walmart had a number of interesting announcements in the last two weeks so you're right Walmart did not announce a new Amazon Prime competitor but some news apparently leaked and so I think originally Vox recode had an article and now a bunch of other people at articles and Walmart kind of confirmed that the, the basic details of the article where accurate, but the news was that Walmart was adding a monthly subscription program that sounds somewhat like. Amazon Prime and in fact it's called Amazon or Walmart plus and so, again one more didn't do a real announcements we don't really know what's in Walmart plus yet the speculation was at a minimum that they had sort of free home grocery delivery. The. [41:51] And there was like some speculation that there are a bunch of other potential Services Walmart could be bundling in that in a separate announcement Walmart opened a number of health clinics. Which is a new major Initiative for Walmart and so there is some speculation that Health Services could be bundled in this we don't know yet so it'll be interesting like I guess I'm on the bubble. I think it's really smart for a retailer to evolve into an echo system and have a sticky membership program and obviously Prime is the, the most economically successful membership program in the history of Earth, but another retailer Costco has you know pretty close to the second most successful, membership program so you know it's smart for Walmart to want to have a really successful program so in that sense like I'm encouraged that they're doing something. [42:46] It's hard to imagine what it could be that that's going to stack up favorably to Amazon Prime so I guess that's my fear like I'm going to reserve judgment until I see what's in it, but I hope what they do is something very different than Prime instead of just trying to do a me to version of prime because I kind of feel like that would. But they did bundle in that same week some other news came out so I thought you might be more excited Walmart a t-tail Walmart officially launched Walmart fulfillment service so they call that a wfs, which is their version of Amazon's FBA, and this very much sounds like a me to offering compared to Amazon but I would argue here it's a smart unnecessary one Walmart has. You know pretty open about its aspirations to to develop a serious successful Marketplace, and to me it feels like like table Stakes for a really successful Marketplace is. You have to help all those sellers with fulfillment so that you can have a high service level and you can kind of match Amazon Prime one day and and the only way you're going to do that is if you fulfill the goods for. For the sellers and so this this was not shocking news but but like a pretty important evolution in the marketplace at Walmart do you. [44:15] You sort of agrees God or you think it's not necessary the this point. Scot: [44:20] I do you know when you don't have when you have kind of a what I call hybrid marketplace with one p n 3p and the 1p experience is just typically so much better than the 3p experience because third parties generally are smaller businesses they don't have the same shipping infrastructure so so having that fulfillment by or the this example Walmart fulfillment Services as this Middle Ground you know I'd say it brings the customer experience that much closer and that's what you want to have a vibrant Marketplace you want it you want it so similar that the customer doesn't pause and say oh this is from a third party that's going to take a lot longer or come in a weird box or. The last one I got was all destroyed or came to a carrier I don't like whatever it is that there's those things kind of chew away at the overall customer experience so I think it'll be good. Jason: [45:11] Ya know and then you know Walmart has already accepts returns for 3p sales in their stores and so I don't think they announced anything but you could imagine Walmart leveraging their network of stores like they could potentially stage some popular 3p products they're like there's all kinds of interesting. Twists on the Walmart fulfillment Services if you if you layer in the 5000 super centers as well as the the Walmart's fulfillment centers. So that's interesting and then they did also announced kind of the next step in a reorganization, like over the last couple months they had merged several departments between walmart.com and Walmart so instead of having separate teams and Bentonville and San Bruno they had shared responsibilities but one big function that was still separate was there are separate Merchants buying stuff for the web site in San Bruno and Merchants buying stuff for the stores and Bentonville and so this month they announced that they're merging the merchandising organizations and having one so this is all to me like positive steps in breaking down the silos and having a single omni-channel organization. Scot: [46:27] Very cool speaking of omni-channel a lot going on in the world of Mulligan so you know it seems like there's a lot of chaos out there you mentioned so malls are shaky just kind of coming out of queue for still and then here we are in q1 with this this whole thing the traffic's gonna be down to grown up due to coronavirus what are you seeing going on in some of the mall retailers. Jason: [46:54] Yeah well I think there's a bunch of news like obviously it's retail earning season and so like you can look at all the mall retailers there but some sort of stand adds to me Hudson Bay Company which owns Saks Fifth Avenue didn't have a very good earnings call and word came out this week that the CEO Helena falx is stepping down she was a highly regarded CEO she was like the CMO of a CVS I think it was if I'm remembering right before she stepped into this role and she she fixed a lot of sort of institutional problems that sex and frankly got rid of a lot of the, the ancillary businesses that they were in a really you know put the focus on sex so now she's leaving and, like one of the investors whose primarily a real estate guy who's been sitting on the board is taking over as CEO and you know from. Retail practitioner standpoint. [47:59] That doesn't feel like a very forward-looking move that you have the successful retail operator leaving and you're replacing them with an investor real estate type. Type person you know usually those aren't the people that. Grow traffic and and profitability and Retail organizations so I liked that potentially a bad sign for force. [48:27] And then in other leadership shakeups Nordstrom which I sometimes call the the best of the bad performing department stores, they were actually up in terms of same-store sales so they were up 1% if the full at the Nordstrom stores and they were up 1.8 percent at the rack stores. Which was below their guidance and is not very exciting growth and it's below and you know the retail industry average for growth, but compared to most department stores which are shrinking being up you know is better. [49:05] A standout thing for me and their earnings is their digital was up nine percent which is way below the industry average so like you don't see that very often. We joked that the industry average has to be wrong because it seems like every retail on the planet claims to have bigger growth than the, 14% that US Department of Commerce says so in order from case they're saying hey we only grew nine percent that's pretty surprising for someone that we think of is a, kind of best-in-class digital department store and I don't know what the full story is but part of it I'm sure is. That Nordstrom is more digitally mature and they do you know have 35% of all their sales are digital so you know it's maybe it's a little bit of a lot of big numbers that it's. Hard to grow as fast when you already have significant digital sales but out of that earnings call they announced a little bit of a leadership change they had two CEOs a co-ceo thing they had the to Nordstrom Brothers Pete and Eric and and they announced this week that Eric would be this the sole CEO and Pete would act as president and chief brand officer so you know apparently someone pick their favorite child. Scot: [50:18] Interesting yeah I'm sure those complicated behind the scenes to figure that out and you know they had tried to go private for a while and just couldn't get it done it. Jason: [50:30] Yeah yeah the family tried to bring it private and they yeah you're right they couldn't come up with a sweet enough deal apparently. And then the one that was like the I would call the biggest news is Victoria Secret which is their parent company is L brands. The they have a storied CEO less wax where who's like arguably responsible for the success of Abercrombie & Fitch Express for a long time and he's been the CEO of Victoria's Secret for 50 year or of L brands for 50 years they announced that they were selling Victoria's Secret, to a private Equity Firm or 55% of the equity to Sycamore Partners at a surprisingly low valuation so 1.1 billion dollars. And you know so based on Revenue there was a. [51:37] You know in expectation that the valuation might be considerably higher you know Victoria Secrets really struggled lately because they you know their whole marketing stick is this, aspirational perfect image of beauty and they mostly were selling like discount bras in stores that were really designed to cater to men, and increasingly they're all these new you know bra companies and direct-to-consumer companies that were like way more focused on. Meeting the needs of the women that actually use the products and it had more sort of inclusive marketing strategies and you know that they had a particularly dumb CMO it, Victoria Secret that you know famously said they would never have any models that weren't perfect because. [52:21] That's not what women want to think of themselves as and so the whole like Victoria Secret Beauty show and. Fashion show and all those things kind of once we're strong marketing tactics had really sort of started to work against them, and so you know the it's interesting they had to sell at a pretty low valuation there was probably a period in the, mm when they would have you know valued Victoria Secret at like 6 or 10 billion dollars somewhere in that range to only sell it one. Is a pretty big admission of defeat, and I mentioned that next week we'll have an interview with Dave Spector was one of the founders of third love, like arguably third love is one of the accelerators of this Victoria Secret decline, and they accidentally got in a fight with Victoria Secret so they're the small direct-to-consumer company that no one had ever heard of and that same stupid CMO at Victoria Secret that you know mentioned that they would never have any flawed models also said that they were they were never going to be anybody's third love they were always going to be everyone's first love. [53:35] And and that kind of you know prompt this this public spat and you know third was continuing to do really well and and Victoria Secret just, sold in a fire sale in the last week's or had to step down so kind of interesting that kind of the whole female image thing mask the fact that they also had a bunch of stores in bad malls, that are just dying and they're primarily sold everything at thirty to forty percent off so just a bunch of traditional model based apparel challenges in addition to their. Positioning Challenge and I guess the one thing I would point out is well, you know it sucks to have a company that was super valuable in you only sold it for 1.1 billion dollars I will point out that albanians bought Victoria's Secret for 1 million dollars in 1982 so if you just look at where you started and where you ended it's actually a pretty good story. Scot: [54:29] Low basis if all kind of tie it all together with a little bow here if Neil from shoptalk head owned Victoria Secret he would have sold at the top. Jason: [54:41] And congratulations to an eel / let me know if you need any help carrying your bags to your vacation home. Scot: [54:48] In San Diego. Jason: [54:48] Exactly I bet you he's vacationing at even cooler places. But Scott that's gonna be an awkward and perfect place to end it because it's happened again we've used up all our listeners time but as always if we struck a chord or you want to continue the conversation we encourage you to jump on our Facebook page or hit us up on Twitter and as always we really would appreciate that five star review on iTunes a ton of listeners have been super generous and written great reviews but most of you have been listening for so long that we don't get as many new reviews as we used to and part of Apple's algorithm is freshness so we need we need some of you longtime listeners to give us the 30 seconds in jump over to iTunes and write that review. Scot: [55:34] Yeah thanks for listening and also longtime listeners recruit a new listener and have them leave a review. Jason: [55:40] Even better and until next time happy commercing.

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Fast Five: $25 Dental Visits at Walmart, Amazon Go Part Deux, & TRU Head Scratching

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2020 24:04

In this week's Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Trigo and Insignia Systems, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga broadcast from their Omni Talk headquarters at eTail West (aka an Airbnb) and talk Walmart's new health hub initiative, Amazon's new 10,000 square foot grocery store and microfulfillment center partnership with Dematic, Libra and Shopify, and some late breaking, incredibly head scratching developments at Toys R Us and b8ta. For more information about Trigo, visit www.trigo.tech

amazon head walmart airbnb visits shopify libra dental toys r us scratching trigo fast five go part amazon go chris walton walmart amazon etail west anne mezzenga

eTail West Spotlight Podcast: ThirdLove Co-Founder & Co-CEO David Spector

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2020 37:49

In our final podcast from eTail West, brought to you by Sezzle and Stylitics, Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton speak with David Spector of Third Love. While Victoria's Secret is crumbling, Third Love is one of the hottest brands in the category. Anne and Chris discuss his company's reach in Middle America, how it came to be, and why physical stores could be an important part of the company's future.

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EP209 - Moosejaw CEO Eoin Comerford

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2020 33:08

EP209 - Moosejaw CEO Eoin Comerford Eoin Comerford is the CEO of MooseJaw. An omni-channel outdoor retailer, acquired by Walmart in 2017. In this interview with Eoin we discuss Moosejaw's unique positioning as "The most fun outdoor retailer on the planet" and some of the innovative marketing campaigns Moosejaw has developed. We also explore their omni-channel strategy, rewards program, owned products, and some of the systemic headwinds facing the apparel industry. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 209 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live from the Etail West tradeshow in Palm Desert on Tuesday, February 25th, 2020. 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. Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 209 being recorded live from the Ito West trade show in Sunny Palm Desert, on Tuesday February 25th 2020 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott was unable to join us this week so you get twice the Json for half the usual price but as always when Scott ditches me we make up for it by having a particularly awesome guest so I'm thrilled to welcome to the show Owen Comfort who's the CEO of Moose Jaw. Eoin: [1:01] Thank you thank you for having me. Jason: [1:03] I'm super excited to have you I feel like I'm somewhat familiar with Moose Jaw and we can maybe get into that later but the for our audience that isn't familiar can you give us the snapshot on who most joyous. Eoin: [1:17] Sure Musha is the most fun outdoor retailer on the planet, according to our moms we have actually been around for almost 30 years started in brick-and-mortar retail but now we're one of the top online players and outdoor retail so hiking camping apparel equipment all that great stuff, we have it we sell it and we actually still a brick-and-mortar retail we're in four states 11 soon-to-be 12 stores and we were purchased by Walmart a few years ago to help them grow their online presence when we're not calm. Jason: [1:46] That's awesome and so I would assume that in addition to being the world's most fun outdoor retailer you're also the most fun Walmart that's I. Eoin: [1:53] Oh by far yes in fact there is if you if I look at the zoom meetings the number of Moose Jaw bumper stickers versus even Walmart bumper stickers I see on laptops is huge. Jason: [2:06] That is awesome you're dominating the spark. Eoin: [2:09] Dominating this park. Jason: [2:10] Okay and you guys started in Michigan so all my in-laws are from Michigan so they like they grew up as a multi-generational Moose Jaw family. Eoin: [2:19] Awesome thank you for their business. Jason: [2:20] And then yeah and then we moved to Chicago and you were accommodating enough to then open a store. Eoin: [2:28] We we follow you wherever you go. Jason: [2:30] And so if I put in a move I'll let you know I'll try not to do Hawaii or something super expensive. Eoin: [2:35] Maybe I. Jason: [2:37] Although maybe I take that back and before we jump in with any more listeners always like to know a little bit about the background of our guests like how did you come to be the CEO of the world's funniest outdoor retailer. Eoin: [2:50] Well I've been in e-commerce for about 20 years which I just realized which is. Jason: [2:55] So you started when you're like 5 years old. Eoin: [2:57] Examine oh it is I was yes I was amazing as a five-year-old but no it's been it's been a wild ride actually I started out as a mechanical engineer which makes total sense because we're all about numbers in this business I that's what I love about this business it's absolutely a numbers game but now I get into Consulting and then I got into an incubator a new business incubator at Ford Motor Company in beautiful Detroit started a company there so that got into Moosejaw, really my background is more in marketing and Tech and then took over the CEO gig about 8 years ago. Jason: [3:34] Very cool so you're literally off probation now even. Eoin: [3:36] Yeah I think so I hope so. Jason: [3:38] That's awesome and I feel like Moosejaw is particularly well known for their Innovative marketing campaigns and you came up through the marketing organization basically. Eoin: [3:48] Yes absolutely it's definitely my first love I mean it's what we're all about it's what sets us apart it's part of what makes this the most fun retailer so yeah we just get to you know that, we get to do things that other other retailers don't information to do quite frankly just because of who we are and we did we just have fun with it. Jason: [4:09] Instead of give listeners an idea I'd love to hear some of your favorite campaigns but I remember you opening a new store at one point and I want to say you hired a shepherd with a flock of sheep. Eoin: [4:21] That sounds like something that we would do yes we've done all sorts of things we've had fortune tellers at breakdancers was a personal favorite, yes a little retro but retro cool I would like to thank yeah we do all kinds of crazy stunts and stuff one of my favorites was the most real breakup service, which we did a number of years ago where we actually we said to Consumers hey we know that a lot of you are chickens out there, and maybe in relationships you don't want to be in so just send us your your Lover's cell phone number and your name their name why you're breaking up and then three nice things about them so we can cushion the blow. And so we sent this out, and we got hundreds of responses back and some and we did we called all these people now some of them are gags you know friends gagging friends, but a number of them quite a few of them were real and awkwardly so actually if you go on YouTube and search on mr. breakup service you'll see some of the videos of those calls and it's pretty funny. Jason: [5:23] Wow I wonder if there was an opportunity for a spin-off business that you missed apparently there's pent-up demand. Eoin: [5:30] Well you know we've actually had a couple of those we were there was talk at one point we were going to do an app called spot a hottie. Okay and basically what this was was it was you would take a picture and like it see you around town in a city or whatever and so you take a picture of a hottie and then. Basically then you as a consumer can see like a graph of the haughty factors around the city so here's a hottie hotspot etcetera and ran into some legal issues with that one so it never came to fruition but that was, an example of the kinds of stupid things we do. Jason: [6:04] Wow it suddenly Dawns on me knowing the campaigns that you actually did do it somewhat frightening to think of the ones that you weren't allowed. Eoin: [6:13] We actually actually today in catalog ones and it was going to be called so we were maybe a you know we were a little bit more about being naked back when that was cool it's not cool to be naked anymore I don't know if you know that. Jason: [6:26] My wife has mentioned that to me. Eoin: [6:29] Mine too so but but so we had so we had done the no-pants catalog which was a raging success and so then. You got to take it to the next level so we did naked plain naked yet and so so the story was we were it was supposed to be you know everything was going so well that we just were riding around in Jets right, I'm just totally totally stupid and I happen to know a guy who was a pilot for some rich people who had a Jet right and they said yeah hey it's in the hangar you know go use it for this photo shoot so we go to the photo shoot I. Proofs of who the first day I'm like oh we can't do this week. I just I just I just can't take that phone call from the head of name the outdoor brand so they said okay we'll have to go back and do a bit of a reshoot, meanwhile the jet gets taken away somebody does need it to fly to Aspen so oh crap so now we shot the rest of the shoes in the hangar empty and so the whole cattle was called morass was that catalog because it was a complete disaster. Jason: [7:35] That's that so somewhere in an Indiana Jones Warehouse is a pallet of those. Eoin: [7:41] Louisa we sent out the catalog. Jason: [7:43] And I won you did do that I used to use as a demo all the time you had this x-ray concept, so you publish a great catalog with lots of beautiful photography of people doing adventurous things in outerwear, and then you add one of the first virtual reality or augmented reality apps and you aim the augmented reality camera at the catalog and suddenly you see all the models in their underwear. Eoin: [8:15] That is correct yes. Jason: [8:16] And I would just like to point out I used it as a demo because it was early good execution of a are not because I'm a perv that likes to look at people in their underwear, that's also true but that wasn't the primary. Eoin: [8:28] In fairness we were equal opportunity it was both men and women in their underwear that was a really fun one and it I think it that one actually touched a nerve we get so much media about that I've been in million-plus downloads back when that was a lot yeah hundreds of views of the video about the app know it was that was crazy I think it touched a nerve back to like the X-ray specs from the back of Comedy screwing over something but it was it was really fun. Jason: [8:55] Yeah so. Eoin: [8:56] And nothing to do with selling clothes in fact you would use the app to not see the clothes that we sold. Jason: [9:01] Yes ironically to make the clothes go away. Um but that does bring up a great point so you like I feel like your whole brand is based on these sort of clever fun things that people love to put on YouTube and talk about. Is it a foregone conclusion to you that that translates into brand loyalty and customer value is that like I mean, like it feels like that's a big part of your differentiation from other outdoor retailers. Eoin: [9:31] Absolutely and you know I see all of the feedback that we get into Mister out through our feedback emails and we constantly getting most people just say I love what you do or I read your order confirmation email, and I just laughed off the chair and now I read every email that you send me so I think I think it just engages the customer more so that we can communicate and it's not viewed as intrusive, and there are definitely people who will buy from us you know I just got an email I talked about in my presentation in August from a guy who sent an email saying I'm sorry I cheated on you I bought from somebody else I'm sorry it won't happen again I mean most retailers don't get those emails so I think it does Drive loyalty I think I also had gives us, permission to you know that even if we do occasionally mess up that you know we're very authentic and we apologize and we make it right, and I'm actually have seen some great loyalty from that I think it shows our net promoter score we're over 80% regularly and, underscore 88% most recently or Q4 so we really do focus on it and building that customer engagement. Jason: [10:47] I may have to have you think up some campaigns for the podcast because I feel like we could use that. Eoin: [10:52] We'll see what we can do sure hey no problem. Jason: [10:53] Yeah just a side hustle for you no big deal and speaking of loyalty I feel like you also have a very vibrant Rich Affinity program. Eoin: [11:05] Yes mr. towards yeah and that's changed a little bit over the years so going in the way back it was more of a point Space Program, and you would save up your points and then you could only use them on this separate website and you couldn't combine points with dollars so it could take you a while to get enough points to buy anything of real value right, because you get 10% back in points, and so over time we've transitioned that to be a little bit more user-friendly to where it's moves to a dollars and you can actually apply those dollars against any order on moocchile.com so I think it's easier to use, but you know it's not quite as different as it used to be I would say. Jason: [11:48] Okay but like in general Affinity programs are interesting to me because I feel like it's one of those things there's not a clear answer like we can point to retailers where the Affinity program is, cord to the business and killing it I think 95% of all the revenue from Sephora is from beauty insiders for example right, but there's also like all these independent studies though I know everyone has Affinity fatigue and they're you know there's too many cards in their wallet and, like it just it just attracts though I bottom-feeding value seeking customers and and it isn't really it's ironically not really creating loyalty so I'm curious you guys had a program for a long time, does, the fact that you are a brand that tends to have stronger engagement with your customers does that give you sort of permission to have a loyalty program that kind of acts as a, Catalyst for that and accelerates it is like. Eoin: [12:52] I think so also what it comes down to is with Moose Jaw it we're selling you know outdoor equipment and apparel generally speaking you know the average time between purchase isn't you know weeks and days like in the grocery business. It's months or years potentially I mean if you buy a tent are the last thing you need is another tent, so where the where it tends to work best is with, our core customers that the real outdoor users who once this evening bag and the backpack and the and the end so for them it's critical, but I think for more the flyby Shoppers it just doesn't resonate right if you're looking for you know a great price on a North Face jacket okay great but. You're a fly by right so it was interesting we just did a we do big we do a certain customer surveys it three times a year and it's actually tied into a little promo so 10 bucks take a survey we'll get, forty fifty thousand responses to these surveys and we change the subject all the time, but most recently we really used it to help us drive where we want to spend our time prioritization so the big question was okay of these nine things, Force rank them for us which is actually tough to ask people to do but they did it and you know. [14:12] Not to bury the lead here but price was number one shocking I know right but somewhat disappointingly for us loyalty program was. By far the lowest on the list say it was behind fast and free shipping behind, side speed product info did it I mean you name it returns policy it was it was the very bottom of the list, which is funny because we felt that we had a rather differentiated offer there and then we asked people okay if these are all of the top things and how they're ordered how does Moose Jaw Stack Up versus the competition. And really what we got was and you know we were it was generally good on a scale of you know one to five we were kind of in the fours but but our loyalty program which is industry-leading. Was a 4.2 people just didn't really so you know I think ultimately what people are saying is hey I don't want to jump through hoops. Give me the best possible deal and get it to me as quickly as possible not you know when you put on your customer had it makes sense. Jason: [15:19] Sure sure and in a way like, often people talk about loyalty programs and what they actually mean is like a frequency program because I would argue, like some other things elements of your brand are as much or more important to that building of loyalty very early on you guys started giving customers the summit Flags, and so to me that's a like in this was this sort of hard to acquire Moose Jaw branded item that customers coveted and frequently shared photos of on social media again, like generally from the tops of mountains and pretty crazy places. Eoin: [15:58] Or their weddings in some cases yes no. Jason: [16:02] Their wedding on top of a mountain yeah. Eoin: [16:05] Yeah and so what we've been thinking back on it too in terms of probably the most. Successful loyalty programs would be Airline logic programs right I mean it as a frequent traveler which I'm sure you are as I am right I mean, it gets to like a maniacal stage in terms of like you know you're but it to me you know it's less about the points and way more about the perks right and so, we're trying to think more in that term in terms of okay, what makes it special so for example now if you're we call it the high-altitude program if you're part of the high outside you program you get a custom T-shirt every year that's only for you, nobody else can have it special special customer support on and on and on right those are the things that we really feel will set it apart and make it special. Jason: [16:57] Yeah and obviously other Moose Jaw loyalists recognize that item and they know that you're also cool or have too much discretionary income. Eoin: [17:05] Yes exactly. Jason: [17:06] Because you mentioned frequency of purchase in outdoor apparel can be a challenge I grew up in Southern California and I'm I think the irony is, I'm convinced that like 95% of all the Expedition where that was like design to survive the top of K2 is actually owned by housewives in Southern California. And I think they buy a new jacket every year. Eoin: [17:29] That is quite possible yes. Jason: [17:31] So yeah so those things are all super interesting you mentioned that you have a is it 11 stores now. Eoin: [17:43] Eleven City B12. Jason: [17:44] Okay what's tell us about the 12th store. Eoin: [17:47] So you know. As retail changes right experience and the draw of that experience becomes more and more important for brick-and-mortar right you know I think it's never become harder to get people's ass off the couch, right so you have to give people a reason to come and so the R12 store actually is in partnership with the Climbing Gym so this is the kind of main gym in the Kansas City area that we had partnered with Allah Justin events and other things great bunch of guys and so they said a word, we're building a new Climbing Gym the best gym in the world please be part of it so it's opening in a litha Kansas next month and, amazing Climbing Gym there's also be an amazing coffee shop that also serves alcohol and food and then a beautiful news toaster. [18:34] And so it is sort of that Affinity frequency model right bringing those people back obviously there'll be a membership program between us and the, Us in the gym but really it's getting those enthusiasts into a place where where they want to come on a regular basis because you know I think one of the things we, we went through a time of opening stores in 2012, where the thought process is more well let's let's go after where the traffic is right so so will pay for Premium Retail will go after the you know it's a higher rents but higher reward, and really at the end of the day it didn't work because there was a lot of traffic but just not qualified traffic there's there's only a certain number of people that want to spend, $400 for a shell or $300 for a two-man tent okay and you know those people that are walking by a store in a high-traffic mall not so much so it's really more about destination and bringing people in and bringing, those enthusiasts into the space. Jason: [19:37] I do feel like one downside of opening with the climbing gym is your stores all have this highly regarded pull-up contest. And so you can be the King of the Hill and be the record holder for pull-ups and I'm going to assume that the climbing gym store is going to be a high record. Eoin: [19:56] I think that's fair that's fair what. Jason: [19:58] Going to be even harder for me to finally get I've been I've set a goal to get on that list yeah and I started my goal was to be able to do to pull ups and I'm not halfway there yet so I have I have a little weird. Eoin: [20:13] Okay well you know I will dream dream Ma. Jason: [20:16] It's important to have a dream but when I go to the store or something like as far as I remember you were one of the first retailers to have a mobile point-of-sale, and so Associates were out on the floor helping customers and I feel like you guys have always had this great 360 degree, view of the customer so you buy ski boots online one season and you come in the next season and you want that same size like the person in the store knows what size, I bought online last year I feel like those things are starting to be requirements and all retail but you guys are really had them for a long time. Eoin: [20:52] Yeah I mean really going back to as long as I've been with Moosejaw such as an age, and really it's a core tenet of what we do at moves to raise the is that you got to be customer driven I know that stright and people say it but it's amazing how many times we actually don't follow it in retailgeek, rise and so from us it's like you know put on your customer hat, if you walk into a store you expect it to be exactly the same as the experience online if I bought it online yeah of course I have to be able to return it in the store right if I saw a price online, yeah I expect to pay the same price in the store it's not rocket science right it's what people expect and so we really set up our it infrastructure to support that, from the very GetGo and then more omni-channel stuff big part of it is is endless aisle so we've been doing endless aisle, endlessly I mean four years it's 20% of some of our stores volume is actually a product that they don't stock, but that we will ship to you for free in two days and you know it's you know it's obviously a more consultative sales process if you're buying a tent or a backpack so, you know our stores are 4,000 square feet we're not going to have all the tents but we can show you the two men and then send you the format. Jason: [22:14] Um So all fabulous stuff I do want to it's not all unicorns and rainbows we on this show talk a lot about, sort of distressed apparel retailers right and so obviously there's all these department stores that predominantly rely on apparel sales that are kind of sucking wind, there's a bunch of retailers that are ma based apparel retailers mostly that have a at the beginning of their name and and they all seem to be struggling and one of the hypothesis is that, people just aren't spending as much on their closet as they once did so, people are more into experiences they have fewer wardrobes at home and you know good clothes are, like less expensive to acquire than they once did in your category I could imagine it's almost worse because. Intrinsically your customers do like experiences like so it is that a trend you guys see an outdoor like are people spending Less on apparel. Eoin: [23:21] Actually no I think I think where we kind of bucked the trend because of the fact that our apparel is built for experiences and for supporting those experiences most of the apparel that we sell is, it certainly isn't this poseable apparel right it's actually product that is built to last almost every. Apparel brand that we sell has a warranty program where they will fix that product for you rather than replace it I just, I just got had my Arc'teryx jacket fixed you know I could obviously get Arc'teryx jackets all the time but I send it away they fixed my zipper and we're back in business with. Jason: [23:58] I feel like they should have a dude that comes to your office and fixes it for you. Eoin: [24:01] You would think but not afraid not but actually but Osprey I mean you name all these brands most of them have lifetime guarantees and so, the trend actually plays to us in that especially with younger folks they are looking to. Invest in apparel right invest in product and, we have investment grade stuff and it is about experiences and supporting those experiences as well. Jason: [24:29] Interesting is there like do the products continue to I mean I know there's a lot of like it's a more technical category of apparel to I are there, did does the technical Innovation help your buying cycle like is there better you know water repellent attributes this year than last year and therefore I need a new jacket even though my old one is working perfectly. Eoin: [24:53] Sure I mean attack is a huge. Driver within the outdoor space more so I would say in the gear category then in apparel but it's still a big deal you know there there are always people that want to have the latest and greatest North Face just came out with a new tech, call Future life that's all about a very flexible rainproof outer material so there's constant Tech, and that's that's driving the business and driving you know what people want to do so they can have a higher, higher performance experience and a better experience at doors. Jason: [25:29] God shaped I feel like a product Innovation we need is a reminder feature in the apparel so you mentioned how long the apparel Lass, every time I visit my in-laws in Detroit I forget to bring a hat, so I feel like I go to the Gross Point Moose Jaw on Kercheval every single time I visit my mother in law to buy a new hat. Eoin: [25:51] With that that's working for us why would you want to remind you to bring the Hedge. Jason: [25:55] Yeah see I feel like because you're the funnest most customer-centric retailgeek. Eoin: [26:01] That is fair okay you got me there. Jason: [26:04] Okay just just something to think about so, I'm always curious you've been in the space a long time you guys have been on the Forefront of a lot of experiences if we if you and I and there's a visual I know you've been craving if you and I get in the hot tub time machine together. Yeah and zip forward 5 or 10 years is the outdoor apparel. Shopping experience will likely to be the same as it is now is there just well the coffee just have CBD in it and that's the gist of it or like how do you think how would you like to see that that shopping experience evolve. Eoin: [26:48] So you know I think online obviously the big pushes towards customer convenience right I mean for us so the short term so if we just go forward you know a few months in the time machine we're looking at. [27:02] Taking Omni to the next level just to in terms of. Delivery timing promise States all of those things those those expectations have just changed so dramatically even in the last 12 months that if you're not keeping up here to get left behind. Customers you know in that priority ranking that we did that was number two. Fasten free number to right so it's the entree to the game and if the customer can get it for the same price and get it a day sooner, they're going to get it, so that that I think is the Big Driver within the outdoor space I think what's different is you know that consumers are very focused on the environment and the Environmental, and so certainly things like, there's going to be a bigger push and it's already starting into used right and refurbs and doing that not as a way to save money but as a way to save the environment and so I think we're going to start to see more, Patagonia is doing at the Warren where North Face is getting into this as well so I think we're going to see a lot more with that and there's still a role for retailgeek, in those pieces but it's not just a it's not just a thrift store approach. Jason: [28:19] Yeah I want to say I saw a Shark Tank Episode where there were some guys that like their business model was we singe your ski kit. To the resort for you to rent so not the skis and boots that you typically can rent. All the expensive outerwear that you need for your three young kids that outgrow it like right away. Eoin: [28:42] And that could certainly be part of the model to I think it really depends upon the, just has specific and Specialty and item is you know I certainly in the ski industry obviously rental is a big part of the equation I don't think I would rent base layer for example. But but yeah a very very specialty piece of equipment for for climbing a mountain potentially yeah. Jason: [29:07] Yeah I don't know that's another area where I might want to know that that Carabiner is at full strength. Eoin: [29:14] Yeah so there's a reason why we don't accept returns climbing equipment yeah it's a safety issue. Jason: [29:21] That seems fair a fascinating thing to me you mentioned the like speed of delivery a fascinating thing to me is the Ever Changing customer expectations so you'll probably remember, I remember Moose Jaw doing a really early pilot in like same day or next day delivery and at the time I thought oh this is super cool Nobody Does this, and I remember talking to the the VIN CEO and him saying like yeah it like, it really didn't get big adoption like customers really didn't leverage it and the fascinating thing was when we started offering next day delivery. Customers opted into our two-day delivery much more often than they used to so is like the. That it kind of created anchoring it made the two-day delivery seem like a better deal when you had this more expensive one day delivery but customers at that time didn't necessarily crave one day whereas, today when I can get my paper towels delivered in one day. Yeah it or a cup of coffee in Shanghai and in 15 minutes it changes expectations for everything. Eoin: [30:34] It absolutely does you know I think the flip side though is interesting so for example Timberland is just coming out where they're offering to to plant a tree. If you accept slower delivery. And so and it might be specific to the outdoor industry and the fact that we're so eco-friendly but I think there is an element to that which is to say okay. Yes we want it fast but is it really free when it's free right and what is the what is the bigger environmental impact and, maybe we maybe maybe there maybe there's a bit of a trade-off maybe it isn't hey I want it every you know I want to order the paper towels and then this and then that maybe there is some batching involved maybe there's a way for us to. Attack it in a slightly more eco-friendly way. Jason: [31:23] Yeah that's actually interesting because you know obviously there's a number of retailers that have tried some like small Financial incentive to. For more economical shipping and often that that Financial incentive isn't persuasive enough. Eoin: [31:38] Write a dollar who. Jason: [31:39] Yeah or a free video downloader something that maybe a few like you won't use and so it's not persuasive enough to change Behavior but the social Consciousness offer. Could potentially out punch its weight in terms of persuading people to opt-in when they really don't need that that's super fast delivery so that's pretty clever. Well and I really enjoyed speaking with you but it has happened again we've used up all our allotted time so in the event that, listeners had a burning question that we didn't get to or have a comment about something we talked about on the show you're welcome to jump onto our Facebook page or Twitter feed, and we can continue the dialogue there as always if this was the show that finally put you over the edge we sure would appreciate it if you jump on iTunes, and give us that five star review if you didn't enjoy it today show we'd appreciate it if you just called though indirectly on his home not home line. Eoin: [32:40] Absolutely. Jason: [32:41] But I really appreciate you taking time out of e-tail the speak with us really enjoyed it. Until next time happy commercing.

eTail West Spotlight Podcast: Poshmark CMO Steven Tristan Young

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2020 28:38

In our continuing coverage of eTail West, sponsored by Sezzle and Stylitics, and in one of our all-time favorite podcasts, Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton chat with Poshmark CMO Steven Tristan Young. They talk everything from Steven's background, to Poshmark and social commerce, all the way to how we should expect customer affinity with credit cards and transactions to change.

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eTail West Spotlight Podcast: Dynamic Yield VPs Chris Feroli and Oded Leiba

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2020 23:05

In the latest Omni Talk Spotlight, sponsored by Sezzle and Stylitics, Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton sit down with Dynamic Yield VP's Chris Feroli and Oded Leiba. Recently acquired by McDonald's, Dynamic Yield is looking to change how retailers aggregate and analyze the various streams of data available to them and what doing it well could mean for creating great customer experiences of the future.

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eTail West Spotlight Podcast: Zach Davis, Founder & VP Business Development Stylitics

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2020 31:30

In our third podcast from eTail West, sponsored by Sezzle and Stylitics, Anne Mezzenga and Chris Walton talk data, product curation, and online fashion outfitting and styling with the founder of Stylitics himself, Zach Davis. You will learn from Zach how the company got its start cataloging closets and then quickly transformed itself into a platform to help retailers increase online conversion with relative ease. **Sponsored Content**

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eTail West Spotlight Podcast: Moosejaw CEO Eoin Comerford

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2020 34:09

In our latest podcast from eTail West, sponsored by Sezzle and Stylitics, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Eoin Comerford, CEO of Moosejaw and GM Outdoor at Walmart eCommerce, to discuss his nearly 20 years of omnichannel expertise from the standpoint of a brand heavy into e-commerce, his unique approach to branding, and, yes, even his favorite liquid!

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eTail West Spotlight Podcast: Heather Craig, Head of Retail Experience ThredUP

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2020 30:17

In the first of many Omni Talk Spotlight series podcasts from eTail West, sponsored by Sezzle and Stylitics, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Heather Craig of ThredUP to talk one of the hottest trends in retail right now -- reselling -- and what separates her company from all the other digitally native pure plays out there. No doubt ThredUP will be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.

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Heikki Nousiainen of Aiven - Open Source Database and Messaging

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2019 12:40

Data is of growing importance for anyone running a brand in fashion. And commerce requires software and web development just to stay at pace with a fast marketplace. Managing that data can be an overwhelming and sometimes impossible task that can be costly and distracting. Aiven's mission is to allow developers to focus on building awesome applications without worrying about data infrastructure management, by hosting and managing an open-source database and messaging systems for business clients around the world on all major cloud platforms. CTO and Co-founder Heikki Nousiainen joins Rob Sanchez on location at eTail East in Boston.

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Kelly DeRosa of IgnitionOne - A Vibrant Retail Marketing Landscape

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2019 24:16

Kelly Derosa, Director of Retail Strategy at IgnitionOne, a marketing technology and services company that offers cloud-based Customer Intelligence solutions to enterprise marketers, joins Rob Sanchez on location at eTail West in Palm Springs, CA to discuss wide ranging conversation about the quickly changing landscape of retail marketing. In this episode: Seeing a changing and shifting retail industry, with every month something new More channels evolving, brands need to be smart about how they are communicating The future of audio in retail marketing Brands will be smart how they can build content Seeing D-to-C building pop-up shops Finding more innovative ways to engage with customers Social networks and loyal customers sharing their impressions Driving brand story inside collaborations Emerging channels - being able to properly collect data points from new channels Playing with data in creative ways Less partners better for more unified, cleaner data with a fuller lens Important to still listen to customers Loyalty program considerations, incremental positive experiences minimizing friction How retail is fun

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Natalie Gordon of Babylist - Registry eCommerce

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2019 23:47

Gift registries can play an important red in successful online retail, in fashion and other industries... Since most people become parents at some point, solving how the journey to parenthood can be made easier and less overwhelming with helpful content, a curated store, and universal baby registry could be a great success story, And it has been, thanks largely to founder Natalie Gordon, a former developer at Amazon who decided to create a better baby registry. Today 1 in 5 first-time families create a Babylist registry. Every month more than one million families rely on content to make the most important decisions of pregnancy and early parenthood, and over $12MM in gifts are given using Babylist. Host Rob Sanchez sat down with founder Natalie Gordon on location at eTail West in Palm Springs, CA. In this episode: Building an online registry Being able to create a list more personalized for each family How Baby-sit is invested in its own retail operations The original business model was affiliate and Babylist eventually diversified to not just be dependent on the affiliate model Staying with the family past the birth Recommendation lists The open opportunity: most people in the US don't have a local baby store Creating video content to help with purchase details and merchandise info The dynamics off offering used products Leading with the known, trusted brand name, and doubling down on the branding instead of creating new brands for other functions

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Stacy Carpenter of TOMS - For the Cause

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2019 27:16

TOMS has been an often references example of how a business gives back as part of its model. Recently Rob Sanchez sat with Stacy Carpenter, Director of Customer Experience for TOMS, on-location at eTail West in Palm Springs, CA. Stacy at eTail to look for solutions for the customer journey pain points TOMS is evolving the way they give and impact the world Giving $5M toward ending gun violence, creating experiences to educate the customers and drive purchase Greater impact through greater sales, and always looking for a path to balance on the online presence while staying true to the brand Educating consumers on the mission, not relying on commerce sales tactics but being more innovative, and interactive Is TOMS part media company? Trying to engage the customer with issues that matter to them the most and how their purchase can impact that issue Wanting TOMS.com to be a welcoming and safe space without making people feel uncomfortable about issues Poll driven vs. organically selected causes Funding your voice with your brand Trying to be inclusive for all Why 20% of the world has some difficulty accessing info on the web The importance to take a step back from what you’re doing and not bringing in your own unconscious bis in what you’re doing

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Lila and Jeremy Stewart of Hari Mari - Fighting Cancer with Flip Flops

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2019 35:28

There’s a trend in the US toward casual wear, and in footwear that’s running shoes -- and flip flops. One of fastest growing brands just might be Hari Mari, who created a lifestyle brand almost by accident. Rob Sanchez sat down with this brand’s founders Lila and Jeremy Stewart on location at eTail West in Palm Springs, CA. How Lila and Jeremy figured out issues people want to hear, distilled the information down, produce ads and aw what made the needle move A trend towards casual in the US, running shoes and flip flops Fighting cancer Challenges of a first order, re-labeling 25,000 pairs of flip flops How giving to a cause backfired a bit on their launch Going on the road and moving on to trade shows Flip flops meeting a need vs carving a new category for premium high end stores Creating a lifestyle brand without knowing it Now offering web-only products Marketing strategies and considerations

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Valerie Hoecke of LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics – Building Talent, Building Experiences

Beauty Is Your Business

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2019 27:22

Hiring and development issues for beauty companies, how to build and design online experiences for beauty and scent… Valerie Hoecke, Chief Digital Officer of LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics, joins Rob Sanchez on location at eTail West in Palm Springs, CA. In this episode: How LVMH’s mission at conferences like eTail West is to recruit digital talent—raising visibility and connecting with vendors Speaking about humanizing brands, personalization and then social media in beauty Why influencers are so important in b beauty Mining data and social listening Creating inspired products and keeping that while being more data-driven in all ways Cracking the ownership of data Rich opportunities and tools becoming marketplace sand media platforms Waiting for Smell-o-vision? Augmented reality could make many things possible in beauty and for LVMH brands The psychology of scent LVMH’s many amazing brands with wide diversity The post Valerie Hoecke of LVMH Perfumes and Cosmetics – Building Talent, Building Experiences appeared first on Beauty Is Your Business.

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EP170 - ThredUp President Anthony Marino

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2019 42:09

EP170 - ThredUp President Anthony Marino Anthony Marino (@amarino) is the President of thredUp (@thredup), the nation's leading online marketplace for women's and kids' like-new apparel. Over 25,000 brands, ranging from Gap to Gucci, are listed on thredUP.com at prices up to 90 percent off retail. In this interview, we cover the basic thredUp value proposition, challenges and opportunities for the re-commerce business model, the dynamics of operating a two-sided marketplace, customer acquisition, reverse logistics, and the dynamics for brands in the re-commerce space. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 170 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, February 22, 2019 from the eTail West tradeshow in Palm Desert, CA. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Friday February 22nd 2019 live from the etail West Trade Show here in, somewhat Sunny Palm Desert. I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately due to travel issues Scott couldn't be here today so you're getting twice the Jason for half the usual cost, Kira detail one of the big topics of conversation has been new retail Concepts that are blowing up and so we thought. What better guess to have on the show then one of those Concepts so today we have the president of thredup, Anthony Marino on the show welcome to the show Anthony. Anthony: [1:08] Thank you Jason great to be here. Jason: [1:09] We are thrilled to have you long time listener that the show will know we always like to start by getting a little bit of background about the gas so I can you tell us how you you came into your role. Anthony: [1:18] Sure so I've been at thredup about 6 years. And I came to thredup it's it is actually an interesting story I came home from work one day six seven years ago and my wife had a big green polka dot box on our kitchen table. And that was a threat of box, and she reached into the box Sycamore have to show you something and she reached into the box and Sheepshead of unfurled this very good-looking cashmere sweater. And she said I bought this for a box and I was like okay and she said this is a $500 cashmere sweater and I was like. Okay and she said and it's used and I was like what and so she then told me the thread up story where she had sent in a bunch of our kids and her clothes to thredup. Credit. The shop on the site from sending in her stuff. She could have cashed that money out but she kept it on thredup the shop and she bought this amazing sweater that was used a great deal and she said to me you need to go work for this company. And then about six months later we moved to California I was renting a house in the East Bay my kids were crying cuz they missed all the friends in New York and a big adventure in an e-commerce marketplaces in retail and second hand started for me. Jason: [2:37] Wow so decide note I'd be really focused on your wife's new interest in shopping habits if they're going to that directly affect your career. Anthony: [2:45] Yeah she's she's she's a smart smart person so I listen to her advice at least that's what I say publicly. Jason: [2:49] I feel like we exactly we all benefit from marrying up so used to it but let's jump into the threat of story little bit like down and give us the the rundown on the value prop. Anthony: [3:03] Yeah well that the the founding story precedes me by a couple years are founder and CEO James Rinehart look into his closet and just saw a closet full of clothing that eat that he didn't want to wear, but all the clothing was in was in fantastic shape and I think if you. A few fast forward to today where Marie kondo is encouraging people to the spark Joy by removing things from their homes that they don't use or don't love anymore, his inside in his closet and on that one day many years ago and in Cambridge Massachusetts turned out to be something that millions and millions of people were experiencing as if they bought a lot of things that they weren't wearing or enjoying the fact those things, making them feel guilty or unhappy because they were taking up space and they were reminders of mistakes from purchases past and he said I want to figure out a way to, I make it easy for people to easily get rid of these things know that they're not going to be wasting their for destroying the Earth and getting into the hands. And and that was really the birth of thredup it was how to help people, clean out and make amazing you so the things are no longer wearing a particular women's and kid's clothes and then provide amazing deals for the people on the other side of that equation for whom those fought those were amazing finds there are Treasures. Jason: [4:17] That's awesome so if I like to read repeat to see if I get it right basically you're a sort of a two-sided Marketplace for Consignment so, people that have stuff in their closet that they come to regret or in end of usefulness for them they send those to you, you go through a process on board those keep the ones that are resellable and wisto's on a e-commerce site that consumers can then shop for like a high-value products at meaningful prices. Anthony: [4:48] That that's right about there's about twenty-five to thirty five thousand Brands listing on thredup at any given moment there's 2 million plus items on the site. And they're up to 70 80 90% off retail and there in like new condition so it's the things that America has in its closets are. Beautiful but for the most part of what the vast majority are and we take those things that come to us and we we price them and attribute them and photograph and put them online so it's super easy with a person who wants to clean out, and then for the person on the other side who wants to buy great brands at great prices is just as easy as shopping do you want any other e-commerce site. Jason: [5:25] Awesome and I have no trouble imagine that there's a super valuable merchandise and all of our closets that we don't use I imagine not everything in our closet is super valuable and I feel like there's some remorse about what happens to that like I'm guessing you're going to tell me you have a good story for how you disposition the stuff that maybe isn't as hell. Anthony: [5:46] Yeah where are our goal and our commitment is that you know we have a 100% reuse goal and commitment for the items we receive so there's a couple things we can do. With items that people send to us that aren't high enough quality to be listed on our site or in one of our stores or with one of our Retail Partners so what will we can send those things back to them we can say hey, after the animatronics app you can you can pay a little bit and shipping and will send them back to you by the way most people. Do you know they do that only wants they that they don't want to see it come back again or like wait how'd that happen why did I do that and then there are some things that we can. I'll distribute through our partners who can sell those at consignment stores that don't have the quality standards that we have, some of those things can be recycled into carpets and and if you've ever gone to the car wash those those Rags that they use to dry your car off those fibers can be recycled into into other future fight future Fabrics, and I'm so yeah that's that's how we do it. Jason: [6:47] Got you and what are things that seems cool about your model to me. 2 fundamental problems you have with a lot of marketplace models are that you have trouble guaranteeing a service-level so I went eBay matches a buyer to a seller, they can't necessarily guarantee how fast that sellers going to ship the goods to the buyer, and they're also can be a trust problem the eBay can't necessarily guarantee the web the sellers selling is authentic in in the condition that the, the seller promised it's in so you can send it to me you feel like a two-sided Marketplace except you handle all the logistics and fulfillment so you basically can guarantee a service level and you also act as a sort of independent trust verifier that gets to see all that merchandise before the consumer buys. Anthony: [7:31] That's exactly right we are the we are the seller of record you know so we take possession of the goods we have for distribution centers throughout the us and we're increasing our volume of those, are those items are upcycled did an incredible incredible volume I mean we will, up until today have a vial cycled over the past couple years over 60 million items this year alone will do another 30 million so. Yes we take possession of the goods we make sure there in like new condition we photograph them and put them on a hanger and then we can ship them in a beautiful box wrapped in tissue paper and and send them out to our buyers and they are. Generally Blown Away by the quality of the product. Jason: [8:10] And so does all that merchandise that you've received an unloaded within a single fulfillment center somewhere in the US or out of the Majestics work. Anthony: [8:17] It lives in in for facilities in a distributed across the u.s. And we do all kinds of interesting things TARTA route inventory and product to different centers depending on supply and demand and how the overall market place is performing but yeah those those four facilities process all those items, for sale online and offline. Jason: [8:38] Got it and is everything in the Fulfillment center available for sale right now or do you try to I can almost imagine you get a lot of new merchandise from Spring cleanings and there could be a lot of fall merchandise in or winter merchandise in that and in that stops or try to sit on any of that or how does that work. Anthony: [8:55] You mean how do I optimize for seasonality. Jason: [8:57] That's a way more elegant way. Anthony: [8:58] So so so it's a great question because it's a really tricky math problem because think about it from from the consumer's perspective, they don't necessarily want to go into the closet to be like is this fall is this spring is this winter all they see is too much stuff. And they want open up a bag or open up a box and put it all in it and and move it out so. [9:23] All of that said you know we've been at this a while and we have millions of Sellers and when a seller sends you a box of stuff there's an incredible amount of data that you know about that seller their sizes their brands. What they're what the what the what the what brand items are moving into versus clearing out of as you get multiple bags over time so we found that there are ways. To influence what the what the seller will put in their clean-out bag to thredup and it has a can have a significant impact so, we are we are we work with wood sellers in a way that's this pretty light touch but the people generally want to do the right thing if they feel like, they can put a few extra more seasonal things in a bag and maybe learn a little bit more because we'll see faster cell to run an item that's it's perfectly in season we want to share those economics and incentives with sellers we're not heavy-handed about it, we try to use our data and what we can do on the types of people who you request bags from that helps us, can we just want to make it as easy as possible for sellers but yes we are everyday getting more and more seasonally relevant I think it'll actually be. [10:35] Don't forget I think if I think ahead and 6-12 months I think you'll see the the seasonal element of our site really really kick out cuz we're. We have so many billions of data points on this now that we're actually starting to figure it out. Jason: [10:48] That's awesome and I can come and there's this healthy tension on the one hand you really like to sanitize that person to only send stuff to you that you know you're going to be able to sail and is highly monetizable and like frankly that's going to let you come back to that cellar with the best news hey we got you a bunch of money I can imagine there's a subset of your sellers that like. Appreciate the money but there's some catharsis bike again for your earlier Point their Marie kondo followers or whatever in there that you aren't a, new better way to get everything out of my closet than the Salvation Army was last season or something like that and. In a way you don't necessarily want to discourage those people because 10% of what they send you is going to be exactly what you want you're just going to, after project lights out in general do you try to get people to just any of the 10% that you're going to resell or are you happy to take everything because it makes you more seller friendly. Anthony: [11:47] This is something that how we treat. Salaries in how we think about their experience and why they they decide to order a front of clean-out bag has been. Something that we've always wanted to be very very clear about from the beginning cuz you're exactly right do you want them to only put. Perfect things in the bag or do you want to shove everything in there and there's real trade-offs you know them or prescriptive to get with people the more they'll be like to know what this is a little bit too hard but if you just let him do put anything in there then it then it becomes hard for us and I think what we. Decided in general is that we want to make it really easy for consumers and let us as a as a business that is built on, reverse Logistics and data let us figure out and become the most amazing company at figuring out how to make the best use of those goods and monetize them in a way that's great for suppliers great for our consumers and great for the environment, so I think that has been our our our challenge you know but I think we've come a very long way and look there's always. There's incredible benefits over the long term for making things easy for consumers and if we're the company they can figure out how to crack those problems. Then I put you in a very powerful position to build quite a moat around that that volume the quality of the supply that customers are going to send you. Jason: [13:07] That's awesome let's talk about that reverse logistics for just a sec because it is funny in apparel. I've been in this industry long enough to remember when it was like oh no one will ever buy clothes online like they need to fit everything and feel everything and obviously that. That. Could have been disproven but it is the case that the economics of e-commerce prepare alarm or challenged in some other categories largely because there is such a high return rate right and you could talk to most retailers and it's like me and the return rates are tripling and those returns are so expensive though it just takes of getting that stuff back and then how that retailer. Dispositions that can they resell it is new what do they do all of those problems most retailers would say we're not very good at it and it's a core fundamental challenge with our economic model and I'm looking you and it's like, that's your business is convincing people to send stuff to you so I'm curious like a view if you found a Magic Bullet like what what is the experience and how do you how do you tackle that that sticky reverse Logistics challenge. Anthony: [14:12] We found the Magic Bullet is to be extremely transparent with your customers so we love to say to our customers when they call customer service or when they write in. That there's no such thing as free returns you're paying for it somewhere you're paying for it in the product or paying for it in your membership fee you're paying for it somewhere it will be like to see the customers is our goal was a business, is to be able to list online. The greatest volume of high-quality second-hand apparel at the lowest possible prices and we will be explicit with you this is what it cost for us, to take that item if you send it back to us and put it back online whatever cost $0.50 or $0.99 whatever it is and so if you send those items back to us. [14:58] It's going to cost you this but we also say to our customers hey if you are shopping with us and you don't seem to return a lot. When it will never charge you a return fee if we then we bought but by equal measure will say to customers who buy 10 things and return 9, hey we we see you but you been doing this, we love you but you're killing us and so what we're going to do is we're going to give you a one more free V but if you keep returning 90% things you buy we're going to have to start the charge you a dollar 99 per item to restock it so, we just want to be really upfront with people about the reality of the business and. Is yours a good news about returns they affect everybody equally they're equally miserable for every e-commerce company so what this forces us to do is just have the best possible product you keep the core proposition it's got to be in a bang on as far as the brands we are for the quality of the product the selection daily freshness and pricing so forgetting all that right. Then we should be able to sustain returns if you can't then you got to figure out a different business model. Jason: [16:03] Got it better in general it sounds like you almost have a dynamic pricing model based on customer Behavior but you're super transparent about it. Anthony: [16:11] Very transferred there's no mystery maybe call him we call you use your level return policy and. Looking to maybe some customers who we say you know what you eat we see you're returning a lot if you want to pay 999 a month. And you can return as much as you want then then we'll offer that to you so I think you I think we just got to think about and see where you're going to meet them where they're at and left with them about what it takes for us to stay in business if they love the product to be like you know what I get it, it's like I don't know actually returning nine things back to you until we actually created a product called a buying bundle, we're and we found a lot of customers were buying lots of things and they were paying shipping from you know from us to get the stuff sent to them and then returning stuff in the way back, we gave them its ability to, can I purchase things we didn't ship it to we have critical mass of their items on the site and then they would they would avoid the the shipping fee until there's things you can do when you understand a job your customers trying to do, then you can start to say okay I see what you're trying to do here is what it what it looks like on our end and hear some here's some options on ways we can, we can make it work for you and Mike brought work for us we're big fans of that we we love experimenting with things like that we think it's the way he Commerce has to work. And yeah there's no such thing as free returns. Jason: [17:31] So one of the fundamental challenges usually have with a two-sided marketplaces is you have to win at two things you have to convince a bunch of people to be sellers on your platform and you have to come in too much of people that want to buy goods from your platform on most resided marketplaces the strategy is usually to be great at one of those which, facilitates the other if you get a ton of buyers it's easier to get sellers if you get a ton of great merchandise it's easier to get buyers like in your case have you found that there's one side that you absolutely have to win at or what what is the strategy around customer acquisition. Anthony: [18:02] There are really two so that the needs and the in the complexities of the marketplace of significant they're very different on both sides and so so what start with with suppliers generally speaking. Are our core supplier the value proposition is the clean out the closet in a really simple way and to feel good about it and so we've invested a lot of time and effort, and delivering on that value and so suppliers come to us in droves we we do not have a difficult time attracting suppliers to thredup in one thing I think, people are often surprised to hear about our businesses are like well okay so they come once you know when do they come back like in 2 years I'm like no they come back in like 3 months, because they go out and they keep on things so it's not it's not as if they clean out their closet and their I'm good you know they're good like until the next season rolls around so. So that side of the business is very viral and it drives itself. [19:03] And for us we spent a lot of time and effort understanding at the really at the at the at the user level you know how to get the best Supply I had to get it at the right rate how to manage that with the with the overall growth and scale of our Marketplace, on the demand side little bit different there's lots of places in the universe for people to buy inexpensive clothing. If you are looking to buy a $8 dress you can go to Walmart if if you're looking to buy an $8 J.Crew dress little bit harder so we we've learned a couple different things on the demand side which is the, are Brands matter customers love. [19:40] Defined the brands they love and trust and who's quality they believe in at great prices and the fact that it's second hand is almost incidental to them, if we can maintain the quality part of the equation that they don't even I think they actually probably forget that they're shopping second-hand I think another thing we found, that app that that our customers love on the demand side which is a key part of the value problem I'll come back to you that your acquisition point in a second, is they love to see new things. Every day we have customers would love to see new things on thredup every hour and they come back that that much they're hitting refresh if they're going to their app that much because not unlike their Instagram feed, we're all day long we're listening 60 70 80 thousand fresh items every day so if they didn't see that dvf wrap dress, or that Banana Republic jean jacket, that they were looking for right away if they come back in an hour at the rate which were processing Goods to our system but there's probably something there that's if not V things are looking for it's pretty darn close so that's a very powerful part of the demand side proposition that makes it look a little bit different from being just you know hey I'm looking for a great value on clothing and I think the final thing is. One thing about Millennials and and younger Shoppers these days is that they never want to be seen on Instagram wearing the same thing twice. [21:01] But at the same time they they don't want to be conspicuous consumers they don't want to feel wait so about what they're doing and thredup is is an interesting solution to that problem because they can. They can scratch their x444 wardrobe that can move at the speed of their feed, but at the same time they can take those things put them in a bag send them back to us and feel like they're part of the solution and not part of the problem. Jason: [21:26] That's why I make sense you you hit something in the in the course of that explanation that it just occurred to me, another word justice problem you have that maybe more cute than a traditional retailer is your onboarding a heck of a lot of new SKU so like I'm pick and and you're not in most cases getting content from the manufacturer, The Whispers queues so I'm picturing you up to have like, high-volume photo studio and people riding a lot of like attributes for product listings is that. Anthony: [21:58] Yes and went when when a bag or a box of nice a box because. You can do the way that to send items that start out as you can go to our website a request to clean out back and he's someone to you for free it's a recyclable bag about the size of a camper and a big green polka dots on it and it's, I'm very cool or you can just print a label because we know that people have boxes from all their other e-commerce shipment sitting in the doorway of their house and we like to get up the opportunity to have a slightly smaller compact soap. [22:27] Yes people send these stuff to us our customers suppliers send these items of clothing toss and he's bags and boxes and when they come out of a bad they don't announce themselves they don't have a barcode they don't have asked you it's literally a pile of clothing and so what we have built, over the past several years through through tens of millions of transactions is the ability to take you know his ability to take those items and begin to attribute them their brand or size their measurements and do some of this with software and we do some of this with people, because it's it can be hard to teach, a computer what an acceptable level of fading is on a black shirt you know so there's only certain things that humans at least right now and can. [23:10] Certain things are computers going to leave Divine so well so people still have to do it but yeah we've built a system where we can take all these items to come out of the bag on an ounce of with no information. And attribute them as we attribute them those items magically transform from being stuff in a bag that was essentially value less are worthless to the person who wanted it shipped out of their house to becoming an item that, with every attribute that we had brand size increases in price from 51020 to $30 is now its 8 now it's a fully formed living fresh item of clothing again to someone in the universe, and so. That's how we do it we don't get data from anyone we we we built all those systems in house and we are able to do characterized and categorize and photograph you're right we have we we probably take more, photographs on a on a daily or weekly basis than any retailer on the planet and that's how we do it. Jason: [24:06] It's a going back to the customer acquisition for buyers I think of you as a digital native company you you've been around for awhile now you have six years of history and I see this, kind of consistent progression that every new digital company launches and based on their value proposition that there's some amount of organic traffic that they can acquire super easily and in fact there's this Pitfall in the first year you see this nice hockey stick of growth and you think it's going to keep happening for the next six years and unfortunately for most digital companies it doesn't like they grow fast to a certain point and then they start to plateau and depending on their value prop that Plateau could be 60 million dollars in sales that could be a billion dollars in sales it almost doesn't matter but what happens after that. It certainly requires a lot more effective marketing to acquire new customers and so I'm curious six years and I'm kind of assuming you're either at that point or you've already surpassed that point and what are you doing now to acquire customers and how's that working. Anthony: [25:07] So your ear right I mean that we've been through those Cycles I mean I remember the days of 00 those days of yore when you know spending money on Facebook or Google, was was easy and satisfying but, you're right you get to a certain scale and those auctions get more more competitive, and you need to start to do two things you need to diversify, the way in which you reach customers because on up if you're trying to build a predictable business. Were you can where you can grow smartly quarter-over-quarter you can't just keep turning up the Facebook and Google dial and assume that the Matrix are all just going to continue to work so you've got to figure out a way to to grow efficiently by doing different things, in addition to doing the old things better and better and then the second thing you need to do is, and you just have to run a better business I mean if you would have that you're putting more product online or renovating, the types of products are the types of solutions you deliver to customers based on what they're looking for or it's whether it's their margins Mansion to you you in the early days it's easy to be you know when twin growth, is is easy it's very satisfying to investors in to employees it feels really good but as you as you get to the further down that funnel. Need to think more holistically about the business to figure out how to grow I mean I think I think for us we feel that. [26:36] A real change has happened you know since we started the business six years ago and how we how we think about. Second hand clothing and resale and how frankly how the hole. Retail of retailers are thinking about it I brand you think about the beginning our vision was hate me know we're always going to take. The items that we that we the supplier sent to us in front of them were going to sell them on turn up., exclusively and what we started to see. [27:03] Is that customers are saying to us look at you you know 1020 30% of my closet. Is second hand clothing so it's 8 you note ever going to be a hundred percent but this is how I shop now I buy some things new, I buy something second hand and I want to be able to find this product in more places it you know it's and it's sort of, it was it was it was a very exciting part of learning for us to your customers start to say that. Because it was clear that we had moved from oh yeah there's only this certain type of customer that buy second-hand to being actually. Over 10% of our customers are millionaires so there's a broad range of people demographically psychographic Lee that just wants a great deal and I want Brandon it doesn't matter if they. I need to based on their budgets or not they want to because it feels like a smart thing to do and they're saving money and they're getting the product they want so on the customer acquisition point. [27:56] We're finding that you're so we open for of our own stores, and we're working and running some tests with some department store is where we have stores in stores where customers are actually, thrilled to find second-hand product that's that says that has the quality in the freshness and the brands that we have in places where they shop every day and it's it's it has the potential to drive younger Shoppers into these, offline physical stores that want these younger Shoppers you want these Brands and want this type of experience I want this type of content and it gives you the ability for us, 2801 Des dollars in in in point of distribution that I thought that isn't just Facebook or Google or TV or instagrammer all the other well-known Performance Marketing, channels that we love but that as we try to try to expand in a T Bar vision. Inspiring a new generation of Shoppers to think second and first you have to be where they are and they're not exclusively on on Facebook. Jason: [28:56] Sure and I want to drill into that brick and mortar tactic for just a second do you tend to think of those stores as a. The separate Channel or separate p&l in that like hey I'm going to invest a certain amount of it fixed inventory that's going to sit in that one location and I'm going to measure how how much money is made off of it or, do you think of it as a true marketing customer acquisition expense that causes you know a lot more eyeballs to become aware of thredup and then, you know maybe buy from you across any channel down the road. Anthony: [29:27] I think over the over the long term. You need to make the case that these are powerful marketing vehicles and that they're really accretive to your overall. Acquisition in Gross that you need a lot of them so you know if you have for like we do it's it's still early days for us there but I think in the end you know until you have a critical mass, you can make the case in Excel you know any of us could do that but you know any early days I think our view is that the stores have to perform. And they have to perform on their own without having to factor in the unreasonable. Gino synergies you know that everyone who walks by is a vis a Steno it's worth $100 CPM he does so so I think for us it's a it's a blend and it's a matter of you know the time frame. [30:19] But I think it's pretty phenomenal if you can have your own stores, and the stories can stand on their own financially and you can put the right product in them at the right price and draw you customers into the store and some returning customers and if customers can bring a thredup clean-out bag into the store and drop it off or pick one up. So there's that there's a number of service functions that we can perform in that store that. Are really accretive to the business but the early days look make make those things make those things work, and then I think yes overtime I didn't mind he would be then you could start to lean into out what and what an amazing Symphony you have between your online marketing spending your and your retail visibility. Jason: [31:00] Yeah that makes total sense that just triggered a follow-up question are you. Like you have any Partnerships around drop off locations like I could imagine, you know like we were coming or places like that where you you could imagine hey there's a bunch of Millennials that are working here let's make it super convenient for them and drop off his back. Anthony: [31:20] Yes State stay tuned so those are things that are that work we're getting a lot of inbound interest from Brands and retailers where they want to work with us to essentially. Sanda a threat of turku branded thredup and we're doing this with Reformation now where where you can wear their customers can get their hands on a Reformation clean out bag and then Reformation customers can put, a bunch of the clothing they're not wearing from their closets in that bag that bad comes to us but then the customer gets shopping dollars to shop on Reformation. So what's up so it's a really really nice way, to make a Reformation front of mind for customers when they're cleaning out the closets and then they're not only front of my man customers are cleaning out their closet thredup has been putting Reformation dollars into the customer's pocket to go and spend the Reformation so it's a, it's a really powerful way for a retailer brand to get rate right up front and center when a customer is empty no shelves in their closet and you know the next thing they're going to do is, stack them up again with new things. Jason: [32:20] Yeah I said that's interesting cuz you can imagine the first time a retailer sees the thredup, e-commerce site it could be competitive in it feel like that's a clever pet pivot to make them you feel like any incremental partner instead of a direct competitor, how did the brand feel about you I do they hate the fact that you're you're you have ads on the internet for their stuff at a lower price point than they like or do they like that it makes their customers feel better. Anthony: [32:46] It's it's it's evolved dramatically so when when we got going on this when I started at thredup. 18 on the early day 6 years ago. [32:57] Retailers Workwear little bit puzzled and and you know they didn't they didn't pass their brand didn't pay it much mind because where we know where we were teeny and I think with the change that's happened. Is that these brands have seen that this is going on anyway so if you go to Facebook and you go to a a Facebook buy sell trade group and you can find. 1500 moms in Wisconsin who all they do is trade Children's Place dresses you can find thousands and thousands of those you could go to eBay you could type in pick your favorite brand you'll see tens of thousands of items they can come to thredup and you'll see tens of thousands of items so the, their resale economy is happening and it's growing it's growing faster than retail in a couple weeks we're going to. Release our annual resale report what we put in all the stats around how the industry changing and I'm so we can I can send that to you. So the point is it's happening in the difference between the early days when retailers and Brands were like huh and now is that the retailers are brands are starting to come to us and say okay. It's happening is there a way we can work with thredup to participate and. It's a win-win and I'll go back to the Reformation partnership we have where. They they they put a clean-out bag in their customers hands or they getting their customer can print out a label. [34:24] They clean out the closet and they get credit the shop so it's great for us because we get terrific Supply from those Reformation customers it's great for for RAF because they get Revenue what we're finding is that. If a customer gets $100 from their their bag that they sent to thredup they spend far more on reformation and that hundred dollars right they they they think of that hundred they got for the clothing they didn't they were no longer wearing is almost free money. So and then it's great it's great for the customer because they the cleaned-out closet they feel like they're interacting with Brands who are doing the right thing so it's it's a it's a win-win-win and. We expect over the next two five ten years to see hundreds and Brands doing this many retailers doing this because consumers are saying second hands are part of my life. It went and Marie kondo has been a great push to remind people that hey you don't have to buy something and hold onto it forever you're not buying it for ownership you're really buying it. For use and I'm in so we we think we're one part of that story and we think we think smart retailers and brands are going to want to be part of it too. Jason: [35:27] Interesting so it's funny I have the saying that a lot of readers don't love hearing but my premise is, but it's getting harder and harder to make a living selling other people's stuff and I would argue in a way that you're more insulated than most from that because. Well you're selling other brands products the version of that you're selling I would argue is partly is yours at that point because it's no longer, you know once you that a manufacturer made 30,000 of it's a unique skill of one task you have one with a unique value proposition and a bunch of unique attributes. But that aside the way this plays out in general is most of the big retailers that used to be 90% wholesale, are increasingly making their own product and leveraging their customer intimacy to make products that the manufacturer didn't see until like 8, apparel space I think of like a cat and Jack from Target is being a phenomenal success probably super early days but I read that you guys are starting to use some of the data you have from your customer base to venture into product manufacturing as well is that do I have that right. Anthony: [36:36] You do we we we tested something and we continue to test it called remade and it's essentially a its new product. [36:46] I think you can buy on thredup app but it comes with essentially a buyback guarantee so you you purchase it on thredup. And we say look if you were trying to toss in good shape will give you 40% of your money back. And so you may wonder why did we why don't we make new stuff if if second-hand is. Is our bread and butter and I think what we wanted to understand and we're still understanding it is is there a group of customers out there their segment of consumers who were like hey I like I like this whole second hand thing. And and I and I and I need to to buy something you but. I get it is this an easy way for me to try it out you know can I buy something new that comes with this buyback guarantee. And it said if I can Ava way to onboard a new type of customer who may not otherwise want to just come to the site and buy something, they may want to buy it new and then so and I think it's it's been pretty remarkable to see how we can use the data we have on what selling what's trending, and then come up with you know I A A handful of items and it's not really a line there's a wrap dress in there and there's a floral top and there's some there's some pretty specific. Items can we can we take that data create the right things and then attract a customer who otherwise may not have purchased on thredup. [38:10] And I think we're still evolving it and we're still learning but you're right the whole move towards private label is massive amongst retail and for us we're just trying to get as many people thinking. Second hand first and we're always experimenting with new ways to do that. Jason: [38:28] That's interesting I haven't thought about that as a sort of trial customer acquisition tactic that's clever and I also, there's a few brands that are like using customer data to invent products and I think I have a stitch fix is an example of a company that lets weaning into that. So when I read that you're doing it on like oh yeah that's cover they're selling some stuff they know the address to the stuff they're selling they see what the browsing behavior is they can leverage that data to make some products, during our conversation that occurred to me you actually have a ton more data about those Sellers and like. Everything that's in their closet and what they kept and so it is interesting it's a pretty, potentially valuable data set in the long-run so I'll be looking forward to seeing how that all plays out I want to wrap up with one question cuz we're running time on time, we are here to Big e-commerce show and you you were talking on a panel about the next big things and Retail Concepts that are taking off do you have a sort of view for the future if we come back to the show and five years like what is that you Commerce industrie going to look like then. Anthony: [39:31] I think what we'll see at least it as far as the the thredup growth plan and the trajectory we're on is I just think you'll see amazing second hand Prada. Everywhere you'll see it in more places you'll see it across more brand you'll see a more integrated into the ecosystem I also I also think you'll see more rental product I think you'll see. [39:54] Packages are our poor offerings like Stitch fix you don't continue to like where your way into America's closet so I think. If you think of the closet of the future which we do a lot and if in the past that was up there was a massive chunk for department stores and then a bunch of little specialty stores I think those chunks the Departments are junk is shrinking a lot. And off price has grown a lot TJ Maxx and Ross another to give brands at great prices and daily prices and then I think you'll see folks like us, who do resale you'll see folks who do rental you'll see I think you'll see all these different modalities or shopping start to expand their share of that closet, and like our hope and our mission is that it should be great for consumers it should be great for the environment, we're a very mission-driven company and where we never forget the fact that the clothing industry is second only to the petroleum industry and being a polluter, and sell it we we we we love at least the idea that we can try to be on the right side of history on this and the more of those brands in those concept expand their way into closets to make. To make us all live a little bit better as it could be a very satisfying world to be in. Jason: [41:07] That is awesome and that's going to be a great place to leave it because it's happen again we've used up all our a lot of time as always a folks have questions for Anthony or want to keep the conversation going and could you to jump on her, page and we'll be happy to respond to you there if you enjoy the show this is a great time to jump on the iTunes and give us that five star review, but Anthony of Whispers want to reach out to you or get involved in thredup in some way like what's the best way to reach you guys social media or LinkedIn. Anthony: [41:35] But yeah we're in all those places on on Facebook or on Twitter or on on social on LinkedIn yet reach out with we'd love to hear from you. Jason: [41:44] Awesome we'll put some of the songs in the show notes and thanks very much for your time Anthony was real pleasure to chat with you. Anthony: [41:49] Great Juicy J. Jason: [41:50] Until next time happy commercing.

Divya Gugnani of Wander Beauty – Catching Up at eTail West

Beauty Is Your Business

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2019 27:31

Diving deeper into Wander Beauty with Divya Gugnani… About a year ago, we heard from Divya Gugnani—one of the co-founders of Wander Beauty, the first travel-inspired, luxury color cosmetics experience, with deluxe products made of high performance and cruelty free formulas. The conversation focused on Wander Beauty’s fewer, better, multitasking beauty essentials to keep consumers beautiful on the go. Recently, MouthMedia Network CEO Rob Sanchez (who actually was one of the original hosts of Beauty Is Your Business), caught up with Divya in Palms Springs CA at eTail West to have a conversation focused about innovation, solving pain points, and psychology in growing a beauty brand, along with the relationship between content creation and brand — plus how the business accomplished product testing with Wander Beauties. Note: you will also soon be able to hear from Divya and her cofounder Lindsay Ellingson about their full entrepreneurial journey as female founders on an upcoming episode of the Entreprenista podcast presented by Socialfly on MouthMedia Network.In this episode: Why Wander Beauty sees value in eTail West, powering more personalized and mobile commerce Content creation and brand Divya on watching her mother transform from a stay-at-home mom to “glamorous diva” in ten minutes Clean beauty and diversity should be a constant Loving travel and beauty and wanting real women to feel good about themselves with clean beauty to be able to do that Challenges to building the products and understanding the process and regulatory around beauty multitaskers Anything you create and put it out there it should be 360 innovation Finding pain points and innovated around those through extensively involving clients in the journey with them Why its tough to innovate in beauty, how chemists want to do it in the easiest possible way, and why Wander Beauty did a lot of product development in Korea Owning all pieces of the supply chain so it is transparent and the company can refine the process Testing with real women – Wander Beauties Being a “grass roots” company How it is actually largely psychological, and how consumers are being tied to brand psychologically because of sharing values The importance of not rushing it, doing it at a pace with which you can control quality Thoughtful packaging and formulasthat keep ingredients fresh Authentic creative and empowering existing customers and influencers Creating a “wanderland” moment of luxury and good feeling The post Divya Gugnani of Wander Beauty – Catching Up at eTail West appeared first on Beauty Is Your Business.

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EP169 - GGV Capital Principal Robin Li

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2019 32:25

EP169 - GGV Capital Principal Robin Li Robin Li is a principal at GVV Capital, a global venture capital firm that focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, and many others. In this interview, we cover a wide range of topics around the hot trends in retail and consumer in North America, and we deep dive in what’s going on with retail, social and e-commerce in China well. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 169 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, February 20, 2019 from the eTail West tradeshow in Palm Desert, CA. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Wednesday February 20th 2019 live from the etail West Trade Show here in relatively Sunny Palm Desert, I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately due to travel issues Scott couldn't be here for this show so we'll have to try to Soldier on without him. [0:46] His longtime listeners will know two of the most common questions we get on the Jason and Scott show are what are the hottest Trends in consumer retail companies and what's going on with retail social and e-commerce in China so we're really excited to have on the show one of only a handful of people that can answer both of those questions please welcome to this week's show Robin Lee Robbins a principal at ggv Capital welcome to the show Robin. Robin: [1:12] Thank you so much for happy having me. Jason: [1:14] We are thrilled to have you running really like to start the show by running a little bit about the background of our guests can you tell us a little bit about how you came to the PC World. Robin: [1:25] Yeah sure so before I was Adventure I was actually an educator so I spent three years and Teach for America teaching special education at Middle School pretty much all subjects, then I went on to go into business school I really didn't have a hundred percent Clear Vision of what I wanted to do, but I did a lot of volunteer work in the local Chicago Community especially at startup accelerators and Teach for America is entrepreneur program which is why I really learned a lot more around, answer when I was in business business school I took a chance and apply to this job opportunity to intern at shemane which turned out to be a top PC found in China, and I actually never lived in China I was born in Hong Kong but I was like hey this is awesome and I'm very curious to learn so I ended up. Applying and that's up to me and that's where I'm at hahnstown managing partner now at UCB Capital little that I know. He was actually on the Forbes Midas list as one of the top PCS in the entire world and so after meeting Hans might not work really crew he's an amazing mentor, I was briefly have Flex has a venture capitalist but then after I finished business school I returned ggv capital and I've been here since ever since it's been almost five years. Jason: [2:37] That's awesome so you are basically followed like Jack Ma's career trajectory sort of starting as a teacher and then going on a diamond 80. Robin: [2:44] He is definitely my role model. Jason: [2:45] I think he's a lot of my real mom so that is awesome and I love the Chicago connection I'm also a chicagoan and until recently I I work right next to 1871 everyday so. Robin: [2:57] Well and that is what I want to do. Jason: [2:59] Yeah perfect so you probably walked by my office at razorfish all the time. Back in the day so let's dig into ggv just a little bit can you tell us a little bit about the firm. Robin: [3:11] Of course I'm ggv capital is 6.2 billion dollar of global Venture Capital firm I mean Bastin entrepreneurs globally in the US and Asia and other emerging economies, it's always actually been doing this for the past 18 years we have offices across Silicon Valley which is Menlo Park in San Francisco, we have Beijing Shanghai most recently Singapore and I am based in New York as a team we live by a few Simple Rules great impact the local and then global. So in terms of stages we're actually stage agnostic and so we can do anything from investing in a c Stage Company to very late Stage pre-ipo Company so that means we can buy checks as small as a hundred K to 11:50 million dollars, I would say that we are very sector-specific we focus on four main particles consumer internet and Arbonne Tech which is what I cover, Enterprise SAS and detect and so we. Adventure capitalist we are believers behind the Billy verse we look for a very globally-minded entrepreneurs and Founders that are changing the world that we live in. Jason: [4:16] That's awesome and you were smart enough to pick the best of the sectors that GB covers to sew. Robin: [4:21] That is very exciting and very relatable. Jason: [4:23] I like it and I know it's a famous whistle I already know the answer to the question I'm going to ask but can you share a couple of the companies that you guys either LED or been involved with. Robin: [4:36] Yeah of course in so I mean given that we already tell whether I'm going to focus on some of our e-commerce before you we love and nothing in the sector and e-commerce ecosystem and so we're actually early investors in Alibaba back in 2003, which really helped to shape our Global Commerce strategy, and if you ask me back a lot of companies in Market places such as wish house Poshmark offer up, do even direct to Consumer Brands like Peloton Lively when key locks function of beauty and even each other's like boxed wholesale and yammy buy and sell. We invest a lot in e-commerce enablers and so you could think of these as, Payment Solutions such a square and a firm to Bigcommerce to power a lot of the merchant shop. Jason: [5:22] That is totally awesome and congratulations on all that success I'm going to assume there were some that weren't as successful that we didn't answer. Robin: [5:34] Thank you we try. Jason: [5:36] Yeah and I hope we will get a chance to dive into a few of those but you were here in detail West to talk about a pant to participate in a panel about what's hot in, internet in retail so I want to steal all the Thunder from that panel what what are some of the things that you're you're singing excited about. Robin: [5:57] So in terms of what we're excited about we we look a lot into these e-commerce enabler is an ecosystem partners, and so for us we could we could be in a box brands and at Marketplace is and what not but we we do see that there's been an emerging Global trend, and so whether it's next-gen retail across the world or enabling Global Commerce Solutions weather on the payment side or actually on the cross-border shipping Logistics I that's something that we're diving deep into. Jason: [6:28] And it is interesting cuz you guys have a big International footprint and obviously a lot of successful North American brands as well. And you're one of the three conversations we have here is. Like us there things that seem like they're wildly successful for like particular in China like social commerce Arch at Commerce or different things that we. Maybe haven't quite gotten his quick adoption in the US when you take a global investment strategy I could imagine that's even harder because you're investing in a company that may excel in one market and and. I have a more difficult time getting Traction in the in some other mark. Robin: [7:09] Yeah that's right I'm but we actually looked at both markets for a lot of inspiration I mean, you know before China Look to You a signed copy. A lot of the models they're right but now the US looks to China and so we actually take a lot of lessons learned and help each size scale, we also see this happen a lot in Emerging Markets which actually look very similar to China on so we recently made some investments in Latin America as well as Southeast Asia. Jason: [7:37] Nice. I sometimes have an iPod hypothesis that there are experiences and consumer value products that get launched in China sooner. Eventually get Traction in the Uso it's white and sometimes sometimes I feel like you can use China as a little bit of a time machine sometime to predict things that may may come to pass year if you like are you able to do that at all or. Robin: [8:04] Yeah for sure and so we we see a lot of Trends in China particularly because China have leapfrogged and many different Industries and so you could say you know what, China has LeapFrog in the mobile side of leapfrogging a payment side and so that's really exciting for us to take a while to look into and next-generation Retail from offline to all mine is a, very fake friend in China that we take a lot of inspiration from. Jason: [8:32] Yeah for sure and it's like. The thing that comes up by for me obviously there's great Mobile payment Solutions in China and I feel like that's a foundational thing that enables a bunch of great customer experience as they are, in people go ho maybe American consumers don't want to do social commerce or something like that and my premises that they probably do we just don't have the great Universal. Digital wallets to enable those transactions like we like they do in China and so in my mind, we may see more of those does Asian experiences come here once some of the enabling foundational things like like mobile payments are in place. Robin: [9:13] Yeah actually you know Instagram has doing a lot of these interesting selling features and it hides a lot into social commerce in the lessons that we see, I in China and so this has been like a huge area and opportunity for us and we started investing in this in this a couple years back, we made an investment call Little Red Book or red for sure, it was founded in late 2013 now it's growing to about a hundred sixty million users in China and is the number one lifestyle sharing community in China, and if you want to think about read it a try to like an Instagram memes Pinterest me to Amazon, nothing is that users there are on the platform are young predominantly female Urban I'm very trendy and so they not work with each other through a lot of this content on the platform. [10:01] And so we see this as, a chance that are in China right and they shape a lot of the Next Generation consumption behaviors and what we call like social commerce and so what they do is they buy something whether it's in China or overseas come back post about it, how do you know if your show off to your friends but also collect items right and see what's trending in a which category and so, I'm making a career trip next week I want to know what's the best selling beauty products, what are the top snacks in Japan that I should bring home and so they actually have about a hundred thousand years are generated content post per day amassing billions, Impressions I so given that they know a shiny at any given time, they actually can Source by while I'm building Marketplace and this is exactly what they've done so they now have this incredible e-commerce business and a Marketplace on that platform, how to cut a tire back to the us a few months ago they even started helping Brands like kkw Kim Kardashian's Beauty brand launch in China. And so we definitely see that you don't answer damn is definitely Berry global, and are starting to take a lot of lessons and enables social commerce to work and I'm very excited to see what what what. Jason: [11:15] That for sure in so going back earlier Point could you see that becoming popular in the US as well like, obviously you know you mentioned the Instagram's new shopping features I feel like a lot of their predecessors have tried shopping features and didn't get good adoption until you could go. You know poo poo that but you against your for your point you got to China and like man the level of Engagement with, the social Platforms in WeChat and pick a dude in red and all these platforms you go man if if so many consumers are doing that there it's hard to imagine that they don't want to do that here as well. Robin: [11:51] Yeah I definitely think that you know if anyone can make it work it's probably going to be Instagram I think it's a little too late for for Pinterest to make that type of pivot but, yeah I definitely think that especially with Logistics getting easier or payments becoming faster and I'm working at 4. Consumers estate it's definitely possible. Jason: [12:12] A bunch of the companies in your portfolio are direct to Consumer Brands and we've been spending a ton of time talking about sort of the evolution of the market and it's interesting. I frequently point out to my like water just have us retail clients that there. They're really only has been one new wholesaler launched in the last 10 years and nobody can name them by the way they're your company it's boxed but in general like all the new companies aren't. Traditional wholesale retailers there direct to Consumer brands that make their own stuff. The challenge has been it seems like they all get to some threshold level of sales and then like seemingly plateau and so you know once you hit that plateau. We see them sell themselves to bigger establish brands or making huge investments in customer acquisition that maybe, seem crazy and unsustainable and I'm thinking about Jad or blue apron or some of those those bad examples examples. Or they start to look at other channels to grow like partnering with traditional wholesale retailers are opening their own stores are those kinds of things is is that just growing pains of the Sea Market and are you confident that these Adidas e companies. Are are going to be able to like hit the kind of scales that give you a good return on investment or is that a challenge in that space. Robin: [13:40] Yeah I mean that as you can imagine this is a Hot Topic Mojave sees the decency and Landscape is changing faster than ever and I think that. What we seen is that there's just been honest and amazing increasing amount of new players launching pretty much every day I want these Innovative strategies that can reach customers that have never been, been able to be done before writing and in the US and this has really been powered by Facebook and Instagram has made it possible it and in China like you said it's really WeChat WeChat mini programs right, just to give some perspective we've now seen 820,000 merchants on Shopify alone that sell pretty much decency. Most of which aren't even venture-backed but have built huge businesses, Amazon has 136 private label Brands and Amazon's pretty much start to Consumer and these are what to taking over what traditional. Department stores and grocery stores have done 383 exclusive Ranch House on the Amazon platform alone and I think that you know if he's he's going to play in the space I think we have to take a look at hey it's been so easy to start these Brands what is it that I can really distinguish up from the other is it a very unique supply chain we look for a Founder that has an incredible story ambition and and something that can give them a very tough and competitive. Definitely somebody who wants to go global. [15:08] Because I think today if you only create a brand just for certain group of audience you actually missing out on billions of other smartphone users around the world and we're very bullish on cross-border e-commerce. Jason: [15:19] Yeah and that that feels like another interesting evolution of me is like you go back in time traditionally brick-and-mortar retail has not. Expanded geographically very well like there's a few examples but like you look at some of the most successful retailers in the world and they kill it in their home market and they really struggle to get. Global adoption in other markets in this this new DLC model. You know seems like it thrives globally and jumps borders much much easier in with lower risk frankly. Without all those costs I'mma start a big believer in the DTC Market to talk a lot about how like I feel like the future is. You know one or more big aggregator marketplaces in every market and then every other retailer will essentially be d2c and the. All those retailers in the middle that are mainly trying to sell other people's stuff are the ones that are most at risk and what's interesting is people. We've met so you think Walmart and Target are going away because they're wholesalers. And what's interesting is there. They're becoming DTC companies too and you look at Target in Hugo man they've launched five new brands like things I can and Jack. Are selling two billion dollars a year in some ways those are the most successful new consumer brands that have been launched in the mark. Robin: [16:40] I mean Walmart and Target have always had private label right and it's only been kind of resurfaced lately and I would packaged in a different way. Jason: [16:48] Yeah and I think I think the difference is now they're treating it like a brand instead of a. A cheaper value proposition to a national thing they're putting marketing behind it and said to me that. A hugely interesting trend is like Kroger has this wildly successful private label brand called Simple Truth. They're selling simple truth on tmall in China by Kroger is in a retailer in China. And I feel like that that's an interesting Trend that you guys are sort of on the, the right side of it the moment Scott would be very angry at me and I didn't ask about on demand Services as you may know he he's started up another one of those as we speak. So he's obviously bullish that is that like you see a good future for the on-demand type Services as well. Robin: [17:37] Oh yeah this is a segment that we love to invest in especially because it is a crossover between both e-commerce and orbitec and so you know we we actually started to see this take off and then you ask me for China, but what China is done is another Emerging Markets is is that it's taken off because it's driven off by them by micro Mobility I saw when you look at on demand services in the US you can always remember. All the different silos that is touch like GrubHub doordash ubereats really just go after food. [18:10] And then you have instacart going at the grocery and your Postmates going on these various goods and, and then you have some very select on demand for massages or what not. But I think that you know that the issue or kind of the challenges that this can provide is that. You have to acquire users again and again and it say it gets really expensive and maintaining even operational fleets on your own is something that requires a lot of capital and it's very very intense of an illusion all four, Founders as of what we've seen in China emerge I need mega platforms are so-called super apps so very sample maid swan. [18:50] It's a rising super app in China it's kind of like an Amazon for services, that's all you have fresh. Reviews Yelp delivery local Services booking, movie tickets groceries even you can't even book travel and vacations on there and let alone ride-hailing and I'm bike sharing is so it's pretty much everything, and they leverage the micro Mobility solutions that they have to power all the deliveries and every category that you can find an you know that actually last year they are. And it's now 40 billion dollar market cap company, we actually, take this lesson from China we don't think that is exactly representative what can happen in the us but we see it in happening in Emerging Markets like southeast Asia and in Latin America particularly Brazil Mexico and what not and so. [19:40] Even the new Emerging Markets are improving upon that model which is so exciting and they're adding like Payment Solutions on top of it, and so we are very bullish on On Demand. Jason: [19:51] Very cool and then the other one, has a lot of Buzz lately is that last Mile and like new innovative solutions for retailers and Brands to do the delivery is that a space that you think also has legs or is that played like. Robin: [20:06] Yeah I I think it's still very much TV. Does does a retail Outsource a ride or do you do it in-house I think Walmart has try to do it in-house where they they make their own employees going to take something home along the way but obviously house callable but you know you know I should you be wavy we've invested in a lot of these last-mile Solutions and so you you don't like Didi in China hello bike which is number one bike sharing in China in from just having, you know on your own the Lorraine on your own kind of using the service as a as a bike sharing but actually leveraging get to become the delivery and that becoming a vehicle right we have five in Southeast Asia with lime and that you asked for scooter sharing bike sharing and even yellow who now recently merged with rain to become grow in Latin America. Jason: [20:59] Yeah it I mean obviously the direct the home delivery gets like a lot of the buzz and that's what people think about in last-mile you early on you a little to the Soto experience are you out of working grocery space and I I really feel like. Pick up is going to be the high volume last Last Mile there and you you will get you know things like I think they just change their name at what used to be all about him and now I think it's. Blue hippo maybe is that. Robin: [21:27] That's just the English translation. Jason: [21:29] Titian but yeah I know but it feels like they've officially shifted to the English like I think they're putting hippo on the side. Robin: [21:37] Actually seen them I recently had enough and the Big Show. Jason: [21:41] Yeah which is interesting that they're exhibiting at us trade shows I think the US retailers are having a lot of success with that to like Walmart with online grocery pick-up and, and that is interesting that feels like there's even a bunch of new startups in The Last Mile space that are focusing on helping retailers with that. Pick up experience as well so that's going to be interesting when we get asked about a lot is voice comers what is that like a fat or do you think Boy Scout. A big opportunity. Robin: [22:13] I think it's still a little bit too early to tell me and you have these huge numbers around 86 million units shipped worldwide last year and and 60 million households around the world have these devices but you're acting like, literally consumer consumption Behavior to change and like how do you actually educate a customer to do that and having, having even enough accountant and Payment Solutions and stuff like that enabled and I think it's still a few years away. Jason: [22:42] Yeah. I think their categories where it could really work but I'm not sure people are going to order things with a lot of complicated attributes in Brands specific language for the first time the invoice Commerce. Robin: [22:57] People are so sensitive right everybody wants a good deal. Jason: [23:00] Yeah for sure that's always at the top of the decision tree no matter what else happens is. I always always is a big factor so we talked a little bit about some of the successes and unique companies in China but like are there any Big Mac Road friends that you're saying in China that that wasn't should know about. Robin: [23:19] Yeah I think, you know we talked a lot about the continuity of social commerce right the influential live streaming as is huge industry and producing a lot of e-commerce growth in China and so that will actually you know Legion, maybe 4 billion in Revenue this year and just sit with influencers live streaming to almost like 450 million viewers, which of the lot at 9 so I think that that's really exciting to watch you still haven't seen that take off here yet, new search engines are in China and so instead of like the Google in the by do, a model by you people are actually now searching directly on the super apps and WeChat mini programs and so instead of starting off I'm just, figuring out what you want you're actually inside a platform that your messaging or your transaction or transacting already and spending a lot of your time. Alaska think you know Chinese platforms are starting to go Global we just talked about Alibaba all right, but that's how much does one part of what they have in you have fight dance in Tik Tok and, some of these digital platforms are just just massive and then lastly alipay and WeChat pay will continue to expand across borders. Jason: [24:30] Yeah it's funny when I get a tourist destination now it feels like the one that's had the most Traction in the u.s. is Ali pay for Chinese tourist so like you can use all your pay that to pay for your taxi in Las Vegas now all right like beginning makes perfect sense. Robin: [24:44] Oh yeah I think that you know you definitely see Ali Baba and other players, really focusing on the China outbound market right it is a very valuable demographic you have only pay has 600 million active users in China they have you know, but they have a lot of focus on these outbound outbound Travelers last year there was about 130 million outbound trips just out of town all alone and so 25% of that was actually to North America, and so in order to service them who kind of, use alipay at home every day and they're spending like $4,005 in dollars per trip abroad how could you not. You know Market to that consumer base and so I think that you know that's definitely something that you'll see more and more of in terms of Partnerships around the world. Jason: [25:36] Yeah I know that makes perfect sense we talked a little bit about Alibaba one thing I'm curious about is. Is China a winner-take-all model like it feels like Alibaba is so huge and is, doing so well and everything in all their categories and obviously we chat seems like they're huge and yet there are still new Mega platforms it's seemed like they emerge and it seems like they're getting traction like that. Robin: [26:00] Yeah and I think our accounts you just the percentage of e-commerce as a percentage of retail Ryan and sell in the US has 10% and in China that's what money per side so it's still a lot of room to grow that said Ali Baba still accounts for 60 to 70% of that market and in terms of volume and so I think that they are incredibly smart and very strategic, so instead of just looking at you know influence our side and partnering with red.for example on fasting and in these cases they actually have time now which is it is amazing with just a, not working very efficient wealth domestically and operationally international as well, I am so impressed by that platform at this this Consortium just to get some background. [26:48] Play Alibaba committed to the smart China Logistics Network to provide had a 24-hour delivery of any product anywhere in China. And I actually spent about 43 billion dollars she just even kick start this project and so they, they want to do this in terms of like shipping domestically in China and even 72 hours globally, I am so as taobao in China has transformed in entire generation shopping Behavior I think that time now from Alibaba can actually transform the traditional Logistics ecosystem, and so they have this incredible brain behind data intelligence domestic fulfillment cross-border Network, Urban Last Mile and even tapping into the rural Villages of China which tons of opportunity may think we we care a lot about you know Beijing and Shanghai all the time but you know the real opportunity in I'm just dumb, the bulk of the people are actually living in your 2 tier 3 tier 4 City and so. I think that like it's it's very smart that you know Alibaba is investing heavily in the logistic space, I'm just as Amazon is doing so here in the US and globally as well. Jason: [27:58] That's funny I I've been any Commerce long enough to remember when people used to think e-commerce was going to be a capital light like the numbers that they're throwing out in terms of infrastructure Investments are like hard to get your brain around. Robin: [28:12] Oh yeah and I mean I think that you know when you think about shipping that's a necessary necessity for any reason we are a merchant not just shipping to the consumer but even like, how do you handle returns I had an end kind of how do you make a faster but also more cost-effective and I think that sucker is still. Still early, Amazon is as pushing the envelope right into the bar is that a higher and higher for the customer everyday and so you actually see we see this a lot of startups popping up in very specific Niche Solutions right or just one product Solutions hey shipping labels or where how they ignore talk stores are handling returns and I think that it's definitely a very promising and as Avicii where it were looking a lot into the space cuz I think the last few years, we talked about TTC it's a lot of investment and how do you how do you prove to find an experience and now you know, baby toddlers And and companies are really investing into retail automation back and how do you improve the inefficient sees that you have and that's something that they're learning a lot from overseas as well because China really leads and logistic. Jason: [29:23] For sure and it you know you mentioned the reverse Logistics that feels like. There's so much room still to improve that and it's so important for the economic the unit economics by. In us the apparel industry you know he's usually moving e-commerce but returns are like an enormous piece and cost of that thing that seems like it's not sustainable. Robin: [29:45] Oh yeah and a lot of times you could be even 40 to 70% are recharged much higher than what you would see offline. Jason: [29:52] So you can imagine there's some small vendor here that you and I haven't met yet that is figured out at help mitigate that returns problem for retailers and that could be a great, Great Neck story for for growth and then e-commerce face. So I know we're running out of time I'd love to get your perspective about where you think all this is going like you know if we jump in that time machine and go forward 5 or 10 years how do you see the the markets of. Robin: [30:18] What I definitely look alive for to Global platforms I'm being with a shop a very easily all across the world, what no matter where you are in the US and China what not then second and is I look a lot into a eye and intelligence, so how do you make a more efficient last waste Mendes trickles into other categories not just an apparel or Commerce right but you have, you know from anybody from univ restaurants to coffee shops and and whatnot and lastly. Sustainability and kind of CSR right and I think that, you know what I shop a lot on mind mapping Chopper have a box that coming almost every day but it appeases me to think about how many trees that like I'm actually cutting down and and even though we recycle, how much of that really gets reused a memory package and it's a really looking forward to somebody solving the sustainability problem for sure. Jason: [31:18] Got no I got those are going to be interesting I'm looking for to find them as well and that's going to be a great place to leave it because it's happen again we've used up all our allotted time, as always if folks have a comment or question feel free to jump on Facebook and will, continue the dialogue there if you enjoyed this episode we love that five star review on iTunes but Robin if listeners want to learn more about ggv or they've got the next grade, Innovation and I need your help finding it like what's the best way to get in touch with you. Robin: [31:48] Find me a LinkedIn I leave my email there and you can message me at anytime. Jason: [31:53] That's awesome we will put that in the show note so no need to try to write it down while you're driving or anything with that Robin is it's been a real pleasure to chat with you and thanks very much for being on the show. Robin: [32:04] Thank you it was a lot of fun. Jason: [32:05] Until next time happy commercing.

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Anthony Marino of thredUP – The World’s Largest Online Thrift Store

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2019 17:33

There’s a vision held by the world’s largest online thrift store where you can buy and sell high-quality secondhand clothes — a healthier and cleaner world… Anthony Marino, President of thredUP, joins Rob Sanchez on location in Palm Spring, CA at eTail West. In this episode: How thredUP has changed over the years Buying used clothing online Offering 25,000-35,000 brands A managed marketplace Suppliers, and trying to take weight off our shoulders—how they get sent a postage paid bag, and then receive money for the pieces they provide Why there is not a whole lot needed to attract suppliers except to make it more and more easier Making thredUP different is the brands they carry The Instagram generation of shoppers—how people don’t want to be seen in same clothing many times, with a record on their feed Considering that suppliers don’t want to be conspicuous A vision of a healthier and cleaner world How the thredUP platform is made for an evolution of brands to capture more unused items to be purchased Value prop – when you’re done with a piece of clothing, you’re not stuck with it How thredUP takes items that have very little attribution and gives them value. thredUP has a no data problem—it actually has to create data A hybrid of computers and people—key a piece is getting info to shopper to make it easy Many customers are millionaires——shoppers are shopping for different reasons

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Harry and David CMO Michelle Farabaugh

Grocery Is Your Business

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2019 15:39

Michelle Farabaugh is the Chief Marketing Officer of Harry & David, America's premier choice in gourmet food gifting and entertaining for 85 years and part of the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. family of brands. Learn how vertical integration, in-house marketing, experiential events, and a focus on emotional connection with consumers can keep a legacy brand thriving. This interview was recorded on location at eTail West in Palm Springs, CA.

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Vibhu Norby of b8ta – Opening Pathways to Discovery and Purchase

Fashion Is Your Business - a retail technology podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2019 35:05

Retail as a service—It’s a thoughtful and forward thinking model created by b8ta, building stores that let people experience products the way their makers intended, serving to open pathways to discovery and purchase, and changing landscape for the better… Vibhu Norby, Founder/CEO of b8ta (a platform and store designed for discovering, trying, & buying the latest tech products). joins Rob Sanchez on location in Palm Spring, CA at eTail West.In this episode: Seeing retail as an engagement and marketing engine, not as a supply chain mechanism Retail as a service A lot of ownership over experience in stores The intersection of physical and digital sides Quality of survey data What products work for b8ta’s offering, largely electronic products of some type Design differences to other platform such as Amazon Four Star Products are not “verticalized” Why the product is the hero Overhead cameras important in b8ta’s stores The “war for space” Experience retail is the future How multi-brand retailers should stay away from being logistics companies Same-day is inevitable

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Ep. 61 | Big Ideas for Retailers from eTail West

Customer Equity Accelerator

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2019 35:43

This week in the Accelerator: Big Ideas from the headliners at eTail West. Find out what leading retailers and venture capitalists are thinking now in this episode. Host Allison Hartsoe shares what they said and why you should care. Finally, she wraps up with four insightful takaways that again, reinforce why companies who seek to be of service to their customers are winning today. Please help us spread the word about building your business’ customer equity through effective customer analytics. Rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Alexa’s TuneIn, iHeartRadio or Spotify. And do tell us what you think by writing Allison at info@ambitiondata.com or ambitiondata.com. Thanks for listening! Tell a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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"The Intersection of Preferences and Intent" (with Chris Homer, CTO @ thredUP)

intersection intent homer preferences thredup etail west

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2019 37:55

Recorded live at eTail West 2019, Brian sits down with Chris Homer of thredUP to talk about how data is assisting the "treasure hunt" in the secondhand retail market space. thredUP uses data, events and preferences to help their customers find wardrobe pieces they'll love, and they use technology to assist them to have joyful experiences over and over.

Ep. 60 | Smart Technologies from eTail West

Customer Equity Accelerator

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2019 24:16

This week in the Accelerator host Allison Hartsoe picks four smart and significant customer-centric marketing technologies that you should know. With over 161 vendors at the show, who all say nearly the same thing, it’s incredibly hard to find the signal in the noise. Allison identifies what nagging problems these four vendors solve for analysts and why they made the cut. From TV tracking to voice to payments and search, listen to this podcast to find out which technologies might be right for you. Please help us spread the word about building your business’ customer equity through effective customer analytics. Rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Alexa’s TuneIn, iHeartRadio or Spotify. And do tell us what you think by writing Allison at info@ambitiondata.com or ambitiondata.com. Thanks for listening! Tell a friend! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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"Bottle Up Kindness" (w/ Ingrid Milman, Ann Taylor)

kindness bottle ann taylor etail west

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2019 31:31

Brian sits down at eTail West 2019 with Ingrid Milman, eCommerce Strategist for Ann Inc (Ann Taylor | LOFT | Lou & Grey) . Ingrid talks about customer expectations in the digital age, clienteling as a culture, and how to lace kindness into a brand culture from top to bottom - from employee interaction to customer experience.

EP163 - Digital Alcohol with Diageo and Drizly

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2019 54:27

Digital Alcohol with Diageo and Drizly Jason & Scot will be podcasting live from the eTail West which is held Feb 19-22 in sunny Palm Springs, CA. As a special gift to listeners, you can use the code JASONSCOT for 20% off. This episode is a deep dive into the digital alcohol market with Diageo and Drizly. Taylor Burton (@TBurton86) is the VP of Strategic Partnerships at Drizly, the world's largest alcohol marketplace to shop beer, wine and spirits, currently available in 95 cities. Wayne Blum (@waynegblum) is is the Director, U.S eCommerce strategy and partnerships at Diageo, A global leader in beverage alcohol, with over 200+ brands. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 163 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, February 11th, 2019. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. http://jasonandscot.com New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 163 being recorded on Monday, February 11th 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners as a reminder we are going to be at etail West and as a special gift to listeners you can use the code Jason Scott that's Jason Scott on Scott for 20% off but that's next week and let's talk about today long time listener to the show will know that we have been talking about Brands going direct or direct consumer as a strategy for a very long time since I think 2016 started. And you also know we are huge fans of the digital native vertical brand Trend as well, so today on the show we are going to take a deep dive into a huge segment of the beverage industry the spirits your space one of Jason's favorite second only maybe the coffee will find out that will be a question. Jason: [1:27] Yep that you don't have to keep those two separate. Scot: [1:29] I'll turn it up down up down understand the space and what's going on we are excited to have the rare to guest on the show so Crown Royal Johnnie Walker Smirnoff my personal favorites Guinness for strength what do all these brands have in common that have a single parent company they're one of the largest global spear companies and that's just some of the highlights that I picked out there Brands there were so many that the show would have gone long if we covered all the brands we're excited to have on the show Wayne Blum who is the director of e-commerce strategy and Partnerships with Diageo. Wayne: [2:13] Thank you guys I appreciate it and I am excited to be here because the e-commerce space is one in which I'm super passionate about and figuring it out for. Beverage alcohol is is an incredible opportunity for Diageo so excited to be here thank you. Scot: [2:31] Great happy and as listeners also know I am a big believer in the on-demand economy and one of the top companies in that space that intersects with the alcohol Spirits world is drizly. And they provide on-demand Spirits so join us some drizly we have Taylor Burton and he is the VP of strategic Partnerships welcome to the show Taylor. Taylor: [2:51] Hey guys long time listener first-time got Russia have me on today. Jason: [2:55] The awesome to have you here Taylor appreciate you both taking time out to educate our listeners about this exciting and I would say somewhat emerging space for those of you that haven't listened to the show before we always like to get things started with a brief background about how you came to the space so maybe Wayne you want to give us your sort of a path to Diageo. Wayne: [3:19] So I just ruined the audio 2017 to. Take on this econ strategy Partnerships real but prior to Diageo I had worked for Nestle focused on. Direct-to-consumer and was running e-commerce digital operations and and platform. Abilities for either largest GDP in the beverage segments and you know I really kind of chart to figure out. You know what is the future of consumer goods through econ and particularly how the last mile, play and so that's kind of been formed by thinking is I started to focus out that out, and then before Nestle I was with American Express for quite some time and that was either really where I learned a lot about, digital working with consumer data for Target in optimization loyalty like I value CRM, what is a fundamental tools of understanding e-commerce promotional Marketing in the digit in the landscape today. Scot: [4:27] Brickell so when I went from chocolate to Spirits Taylor did you have an interesting of a background as as winded. Taylor: [4:35] Did not come from chocolate and spirits company timer spaceship part of my last three years leading the charge in the partnership. Drizly on eBay, I'm working on the gator products specifically helping Merchants great offers within the platform to Target see how users based off their purchase history the great opportunity for me to come over I'm a check to apply that to what is the relatively new space. Scot: [5:09] Causes of vintage Meg Whitman Dara eBay PayPal. Taylor: [5:13] A little bit after her I started there about six and a half years ago about 3 and then jump. Scot: [5:23] What's at the Bay Area kind of side of things or did you get it from. Taylor: [5:26] I work out of New York. A lot of them and partner drive if they stopped here on the east coast and actually started off I do. She purchased by PayPal surround advertising. Jason: [5:45] That's cool so and I don't want to say anything about it it feels like you are falling all of the traditional vices so I have some theories about what what your next step in your career going to be. Wayne: [5:54] I'll be interested to hear that but maybe that's one for after the podcast. Jason: [5:59] Exactly maybe we'll do that offline. Scot: [6:02] Vaping vaping and cannabis are hot. Jason: [6:06] Yeah yes we careful in this category bringing up the whole cannabis things to work we're not going to go there but when I do feel like regular e-commerce is maybe a little bit too easy and so I I suspect there are some unique challenges around regulation in the distribution model in the alcohol and Spirits category am I right and can you tell us a little bit about, about that how that changes the business. Wayne: [6:31] Yeah so just lay the regulatory environment means that we have to think about things differently right so the US has this three-tiered system that, essentially says Diageo is going to fill Brands and create these these great products and then, working at we're going to sell those products through to a distributor who then sells them through to retailers and so across the street to your system we essentially by law go the traditional router. Selling a product directly to a retailer putting it into their warehouse and then having him the fill out for retail distribution or. Corporate direct Chef when were looking at beverage alcohol 3 Commerce in the regulatory environment do we play with it at most effectively. And if you like it what's happening with last-mile this is this is essentially our opportunity particularly for beer and spirits and in my opinion so. The products being close to Consumers and then the Retailer's learning how to fill them compliantly as you need to do for beverage alcohol she doesn't understand, that presents the opportunity for for this type of Orissa expanded econ shop. Jason: [7:48] Fair enough so in like a general merchandise you used to have two prevalent models you have you know, a direct-to-consumer model where you know you have tons of Brands launching their own website selling their own Goods direct to the consumer so that's. Caspar Warby Parker bonobos never give retailers that own the goods and sell those goods direct to the consumer like at Target and then of course she have these really prevalent Marketplace models like Amazon and Alibaba, where where did you lie you're just kind of introducing the buyer to the seller and that the. The seller actually you know who owns the transaction because of that that regulation and. Turn of the locality and fragment of nature that relationship it seems. Way more likely that we won't or or won't see as quickly any of those sort of direct-to-consumer models. In in alcohol and that that you know maybe more of the momentum is on the marketplace I am I reading that right or is that an oversimplification. Wayne: [8:54] No that's that's exactly that's so the momentum is going to come from the likes of a walmart.com who scales are grocery business, and has the beverage alcohol category available to add to the basket or it's going to come from. Some played some small instances like wine who asked of a trustee Wisin who does ability to go direct to Consumer and Wineries and stand up their own web site in and build a brand that goes to. When were thinking beer and Spirits were really thinking about the last mile either through direct retailer or the Emmys. That operate like a three-piece up like a dress. Jason: [9:41] Yep like the two of the things that they feel like they are super important in this faced so if you're an alcoholic if you're a licensed seller of alcohol you take on a bunch of obligations when you sell that alcohol to a consumer or Aids verification, you know potentially some liability around over-serving and some of these things and so have you if you have a liquor license and you sell online, you still have those same obligations and so it it maybe makes things. More risky or more messy to Outsource some of that last mile to a third party because you still have those, does liabilities attached in you could potentially you know be at risk for significant regulatory fines or even the loss of your liquor license. Wayne: [10:22] You guys are assholes they correct their neither is there is definitely a there's definitely additional levels of compliance and complexity that retailers, do I dress when they are essentially sending this product off to the consumer enough you know that's what I. The challenge to the product teams to solve that the challenge for their compliance group to figure out how they navigate the right way of implementing checks and balances but we've actually seen some some really great innovation in this space you know think I think of companies like an instacart who do hand off the product and they do have the ability to AJ at the front end so they present the terms and conditions and ask the conservative, that they hate that they're within the compliant age to purchase but then they also can scan you know a handoff to the consumer on something like a phone invalidate. This is their driver's license to actually seem really good progress in the DH dating in the the product management, side of this business so retailers can start testing and expand into this category. Jason: [11:32] Awesome I'm excited you're more about that and then one other follow-up it also seems to me like, as with any new product category like consumer demand and in sort of the you know smart marketers are maybe ahead of the the regulatory bodies a little bit and so it's it's not always 100% black and white what is or isn't permissible in any locality and so it's it's it's not even as simple as, here's the rules that you have to follow up on when you'll be fine every provider has to sort of make their own determination as to their level of risk in whether they're being completely compliance or not right and so you can imagine, big companies are at more to lose and therefore are more risk-averse than maybe some you know super small startups that aren't well-funded or those. Is that is that also true or my imagining that. Wayne: [12:25] No I think it I think solutely correct. I seen a lot of of what I would stay out of ambiguity and some of the language around what what are and aren't the rules. [12:38] Looking in this business everything is kind of driven down to the local the state level or even in some cases the local level you have. Tri Counties for example that you know someone like a shipt or instacart may need to solve a 4 in terms of family make this product available in this ZIP code. And if someone order bring it outside the zip code you know what are the rules of, using various types of digital media that were never thought about when you know these laws and regulations put into place many years ago so. We're definitely in a bit of Uncharted water orgone sort of unmapped territory to some extent but. At the same time I think consumers are are voting with their wallets shoveling that. Baby love the aspect of convenience. And they want to be able to take what they traditionally purchased an r and an in-store traditional retail environment and replicate that for. [13:44] Full basket delivery and so we think that if you follow the rules if you understand the local laws and then you get creative around how you, you find new ways to serve the consumer that you know some of the stuff will become more clear and and you know what the category will find its way there, just like every other complicated category has found its way to to the digital or eCommerce Channel over time. Scot: [14:13] Taylor now that Wayne's given us this good overview of of kind of the three-tier system. Tell us news how does drizly inject into their so it got the bread man's distributors in retail where do you guys fit in I saw the site you're in 101 cities so I'd love to know more about how you skill so quickly all those kinds of questions I look. Taylor: [14:33] Yeah well you first start off by saying it and it wasn't as quick as we would have liked to be there we've been at this for over 6 years at this point and I think cautious. I'm in control broke is really what you see not to buy, I think it's important that you know players in our position specifically a category leader in the early early to the space, are really asking for permission before going to head and diving in and doing things that might be in a regulatory gray area large parts. Drizly business days but also the Retail Partners on our platform as well as the state and local level of been taking phone orders need an online orders for a long time, you're making and executing and purchase an app like drizly, it's really no different from a compliance perspective then it is a you know a person walk into a store and showing an ID so all of this being rules will still apply you're looking at a market that software lawyer, did it simply allowing a customer to shop for that commodity good in this case alcohol level. [15:41] And what we basically do with integrate with the Retailer's TLX you leverage Braintree at the back end to take the credit card payment from archers Lee consumer actual retard South and then the retailer is actually the one making the Fulfillment though, it appeared at the W-2 employee of a retailer in some states worth compliant we have third-party integration set up at the retailer Postmates or doordash or whoever might be, I'm in the future and eventually their consumer is owned by drizly and then the actual ending of the alcohol and in-store housing and ultimately shipping of y'all called. That answer your question. Scot: [16:24] It does so imagine you've got in a great to the point of sale system is that is that so you can pull inventory and then. Is this point of sale systems as instacart is kind of painfully found out grocery stores they are pretty archaic and they don't even have like graphics and army images. Consumer-friendly descriptions how heavy of a lift is it for a seller to implement drizly. Taylor: [16:48] It's not happy with that used to be for the actual Stellar I'm wearing a gray didn't know what you wanted different POS system anything from an analog all the way up to your yard when its tail system, I'm to the roadmap there and we can onboard a new retail partner and that's 24 hours a day system, you should be a big challenge but yeah we done the groundwork again over the last six years to make that process as painless as possible for our partners, but the reason why we do not really require that integration is because when a customer shopping in the product and cart that product and then go to the. Not a great weekend breaks chains to get to the end of the journey and say hey you know what bye sorry there's no Captain Morgan available for you because your story doesn't currently have, I'm having that really clean crisp integration on the POS side absolutely Akita. Scot: [17:42] Cool and then so give us some characteristics of these sellers are they restaurants their convenience stores there here in North Carolina become ABC Stores so there's like this legal I have retail for certain Spirits what's the profile of the stores on the. Taylor: [18:00] I'm putting a lot of local retailers great so that the poster typically competing with with the larger chain with that said we do have quite a few men size regionals on the platform, I'm in a strictly scaled over the last two years especially we start to see larger partners jump on the platform, I'm primarily because of the amount of volume that you're through the platform is driven and really that we kind of angered ourselves as if we go to Spotify and Shop alcohol online. Can we start the profile to ship a little bit as we continue to grow and scale, and that's really what keeps our Marketplace model moving right the more, the more selection we can offer our consumers the wife's grave price and ultimately delivery method is going to make that shopping experience just that much better for an end consumer. And at the end of the day that the best shopping experience typically will win and that's what I think would be great if you're at replay. Scot: [19:03] What are the things that I'm a big instacart user one of things they've kind of had a nursing challenge with his price shopping so let's say I'm looking for the cheapest Coke Zero and I make it very hard kind of like switch between stores to do that because they don't. I'll have you know if you have any stores with the same SKU how do you handle that that experience. Taylor: [19:27] We're going to show them all right you want to leave that choice ultimately Yang consumer but it's not just price that we found our consumers or shopping they stop. What type of rating does the retail store that's providing that price provide. They have a higher score a lower score I'm in that also other factors like store hours Etc are going to fix a plan for that ultimate collection. And we've also found a lot of our you know local consumers will you know how to store that they like to shop to maybe they go there in person, they want to continue doing business with that's or whether that's in person or online the number of factors you're the point that you're heading on the difference between the way instacart running their modeling and what we are doing dinner at Wrigley is really offering a wide array of choices selection and I'm really not trying to funnel use. Scot: [20:19] One thing I've noticed on the platform is most of sellers advertise 1 hour delivery which is which is pretty impressive is that is that the market at work or set a guideline you guys to give them that kind of the standard in infant. Taylor: [20:31] I think it's a great question you said really shy away from saying when I was delivering we didn't want to be bumped into this just yearly on demand. It's something that you come in Table Steaks right product is for media consumption and we understood that that we actually took, yeah I really data analytics approach to understanding what's causing our consumers to hit check out, I'm a huge factor in that was the immediacy write the how fast can I get that when you look in the market like New York know what would you guys guess the average delivery time here is. Stop the top of your head. Scot: [21:06] York this fast so I'm going to go 30 minutes. Taylor: [21:10] Yes it's 30 minutes or less right you know I don't know what the exact exact but it's probably closer to 20 minutes. But it it's super fast almost right, but that posted something with the New York Market is very used to write deliveries always been a thing here put laundry or Chinese food on that consumer expects that quick and then meet you if you're in New York is your delivery fees don't lie there just like Amazon's going to great job of training computer the new Prime delivery should be free, I knew your contemporary it seems it's free delivery to me actually don't even talk on a delivery fee here in New York like we wouldn't them other states so you'll have to understand what is that local market condition and how can you make sure you're checking all the boxes in decision tree, a person might think through as their healing check out. Jason: [21:58] Interesting a lot of my agency colleagues are based in New York and I can't speak for everyone in New York but for them I can say not only the delivery fast but the consumption is probably really fast. Taylor: [22:08] Absolutely let me know when you're looking at, you know you're really seeing people put time and effort and energy into sending just the folks I think that's something you know that we really brings to the table is Bilal I'm trying to offer unique experiences not some of the stuff that we don't know, you know companies like Diageo on the building how to get the experience in trying to offer something special. Jason: [22:38] Awesome and that that's a great point. Can a throwback to Wayne Wayne mother thinks it's interesting to me is again going back to kind of General e-commerce you have this tension between like traditional cpgs that you know where houses are brands and these new did we need a vertical brands that sort of reinvented the product and the customer experience for this newer digital enabled consumer and is week we talked about in the top of the show it seems because of the regulatory climate is probably unlikely Diageo is going to launch a bunch of new, direct-to-consumer spirits but I am curious if these digital enable consumers in the fact that people are you no more likely to place an order from drizly than they they were six years ago and that is changing how you think about. Product Innovation and building Brands like you know are there brands that are more digitally friendly in the Diageo portfolio than others or could we expect to see, more in the future like had you guys think about that. Wayne: [23:41] No yes I mean you are 100% correct about that so so it's true we will never have what sort of digitally native heritage. Foreign brands that have a direct-to-consumer proposition but we absolutely do have is a category that I like to say consumerist. Find Conquest, it's not it's not like we're going to create a breast and that I'll put in the warehouse and ship it out and say this is a direct consumer brand but we arguing, is understanding like what is most culturally culturally relevant and then using front of the reaching power digital to to get that message out for consumers, and I won't be seeing in on the back of that if people trying to Conquest the stuff online to find it so, what are the best examples I could come up with was Diageo released a limited edition, Game of Thrones 8 houses to align 3 8 houses in the show set of single-malt scotches so you got you know it Oban Night's Watch it. What we realized by looking at things like Google search. It was that this is this is where people go first and foremost to find something that they want to understand where it's at and how much it's going to cost when you don't have you know what station. [25:01] Commerce Ave Warehouse stop in the mix right now that can say OK Google you don't want to buy Google Search terms. Guys that have the product understand out of Market at online in essentially starts a go to match up with those consumers. To essentially find what they're looking for a joke telling that brand story digitally the comes the opportunity and then. [25:30] Retailers partnering with companies like. Drizly to help bring that stuff to life on life online and it's actually close the loop on placing that final order. Becomes what I would say the closest thing we have to digitally native Brad and. Because because the category is just so engaging for consumers and somebody where is it so much for thought-out purchase, they want to understand how to use it where they want understand the story behind the brand, I definitely think building brands in digital is is a great strategy to think about or this guy too gory and then starting to get creative and how we essentially close the loop on the purchase side becomes the next step in that cuss words. Taylor: [26:17] One of the things that I think that's a good point there when you get in the Game of Thrones example that was a new product release. When that product is released it's important that you know when they're on the Fireside they're launching these products are making sure that drizly in the other. Have the correct. Collateral right do we have the right product images do we have the right bottle facts you all these things in an e-commerce consumer expects to see before or right at watch let's that's another thing to think about as you're going down that brand building. Jason: [26:52] Yeah I know that makes total sense when I would imagine a new skills for a company with this been around as long as Diageo I have to have, read digital merchandising the support drizzly & Company but I'm even assuming your traditional wholesale Partners you know there's a there's a lot more buy online pickup in-store than they used to be so I think, the Total Wines in bed most of the world are probably doing more of that and then you have all this grocery pickup in Walmart and Kroger like you know I'll bet you. Digital marketing and digital Shopper marketing shops are becoming a much higher priority across the board at the auto show. Wayne: [27:29] Yeah and I think that's that's part of the Mandate of our team so when we where we are. I'm just over a year ago a lot of it was just going after some of the low-hanging fruit stuff so. Do we have an internal audit the images we have if we don't have 400 and some odd you know brand of Fruit Products job descriptions ready to go, do we use an in-house supplier or do we Outsource the production work to get that stuff set up, you know who is R&R syndicating partner can we try and build something internally you two weeks ago. [28:02] The likes of us ossify which ultimately we end up doing to distribute the content. We were elastic just showing up in the most fundamental ways was incredibly important for us in the in the sort of phase 1 of this journey. Once we got that in place then you're absolutely right and starts to become the, more ideated space of how do we think about marketing on the back of this content now that we know we can trust, not the content is of a certain caliber and quality to Syndicate to the retailer. You know it's not an easy conversation to have with with any national retailer any Regional guy if you will if if they come back into you and say something like we don't even have product images and descriptions for your brand so I don't really, really know what we can start to do for e-commerce year and, you know that that's been the journey for rusted Dave and that's you know and I think that's a similar journey to most of what she could she'd companies in Centreville. [29:06] You want it you want to do something aspirational and you want to go big but there's just a ton of work to do when it comes to establishing the brand presents online correctly effectively and then a scale so you know you look as good with the walmart.com or an Amazon as you do with you Noah Kroger a liar and Albertsons and anywhere else your products are available. In some type of online chatting format. Scot: [29:33] Taylor on the drizly side I saw you guys recently raised around of 35 million that was good hopefully you got up your fair share of that and then that's according to crunchbase that that says you guys are up to 79 total, clearly must be grown very quickly to to get that much venture capital and there's demand for your service we had to wait on the show several times talking about what they called the bifurcation wear, u.s. split into Canada. Surprised by some of the things we've seen there I'm sure it would have you guys seen you think about your I guess it's your sellers customer but I'm sure you guys see you. Updated. Taylor: [30:20] Identity of the consumer is a drizly consumer to be clear the war doing all the work on addition excetera to drive the volumes for a local Retail Partners that value layers be provided outside of the software, I think what we're seeing is a more receptive consumer to buying alcohol online if he did that was one of the big hurdle that we really overcome in the last year and a half or so is. The majority of the folks that were shopping kind of more by accident but still felt like they were doing something that might be considered illegal or On The Fringe but we've done a really good job and making sure that are messaging we are in, they were putting the retailer out front. When you shop with the New Jersey experience you're seeing which local retailer you're actually shopping from and that's crystal clear to Consumer on our platform I think that's been a big piece of it. Bill you lagging the general you don't match grocery e-commerce percentage still we're still looking at below 2%. I told you nobody by building groups and Biagio like Wayne and his team is done I think of that kind of shows the importance from a category perspective of where alcohol e-commerce is headed that makes sense when I start to look across the ecosystem of know who's going to be a quarters the consumer consumer probably go shopping or do most of their shopping online, that's really who's coming to the shop you're just like. Scot: [31:50] And then any resting time Trends is this kind of is there a peak time from liking it. Taylor: [31:59] Yeah and it's exactly what you think you're seeing a lot of stock application, no happening later in the week you know Monday Tuesday Wednesday that's more for searching and sorting and complaining if you will and then as you start to Rolling the Wednesday night Thursday night Friday night that's Morgan start the peak gallop and then obviously just Saturdays Dagon in anytime if there's a holiday that has any celebratory finish to it you're going to see an uptick in orders, we have to think New Year's Eve Super Bowl Saint Patrick's Day. Scot: [32:34] What was interesting and often struggled with this is a lot of the on-demand guys they go app only because it. It's easy to measure the metrics but I know what you guys also have web you have a great out but you also have kind of a web transaction model. Taylor: [32:55] The majority of our orders do you happen within the app experience and then iOS specifically but with that said it's important to shop and then that experiences, you know a good experience right we don't want to create an MVP if you will we want to create an MLP if we want to meet him all lovable product, and I think that's something that we take him very seriously beginning. I personally shop on the website when I'm shopping around Ridley, typically playing together a little bit larger basket sizes in order, no. My favorites into the favorite thing, you know across the app and she just looks like a full bottle of wine she's looking for for for bachelor night with with the girls and she's off on her way so I'm really trying to meet all of our consumers where they are. I'll take about you that our corporate anybody got a couple. Scot: [34:00] Speaking of corporate consumers as cooking around your site and saw some pretty nursing seems like you guys have done some interesting things there are audience maybe how that came to be in some of the programs you have for corporate. Taylor: [34:12] Yeah yeah if we we've got a green head of corporate over at drizly Amazon a phenomenal job of building that practice out for us it's an area that it actually took a little bit longer to really take a deep dive and we've always had corporate customers yo would show that we really cared and corporate until released on this latest round of funding so I think it will be tried to do today that's really white blood that service for a corporate customer. You're a larger order on there's more Logistics involved whether it's coming through a Docking Bay or whatever it might be in typically when you're also ordering for that or you're not, scheduling it for an hour later you find a little bit of it and you want to make sure that you really get that delivery window because when I, my happy hour and office is taking place at 6:30 they mean 6:30 they don't mean 7:30, those are all important factors I think they mentioned that you're chatting fire but no we also have taken the opportunity to make some Partnerships with some other folks out there yet mentioned the Buddy fridge power that on the back end, you know what you did great Bay for offices that have the cooler unit within their office to automatically reorder their favorite beers online. Doing a lot more in that space and I think that for me and Gracie perspective you can expect to see more and more of that stuff happen as Jersey becomes against Anonymous and alcoholics. Scot: [35:35] I think it's obvious but anyone that had the title Chief strategy digital marketing Revenue officer would definitely have to have a smart alcohol fridge. A b a b shot if Jason doesn't. Taylor: [35:49] No greater no greater. Jason: [35:52] You think you're mocking me but I feel like we have a full-time team at boob assistants dedicated to our in office alcohol consumption technology. So there I literally think we have tags in our office that are on Twitter and tell you when there's a when they've been tapped and and all that sort of stuff. Wayne: [36:13] The route to the reorder part of that cycle in and drizly can deliver. Taylor: [36:20] She's she's phenomenal. Jason: [36:24] I do want to go back to tell your little bit about some of the differences between how you and your wife shop the leveraging of the using of list and and that's one of the mixed blessings with digital shopping for a lot of these categories I can in grocery on the one hand it it makes reorder and it is much easier in an improved convenience and and all these things that consumers are demanding more than ever. The flip side is there's less opportunities for serendipitous discovery of new brands and things like that and so I've noticed like in the grocery space, you're saying some new interesting Partnerships and opportunities that the marketplaces are inventing so you know interesting promotional units from instacart or interesting data partnership with Marketplace shares data back with the flowers that they can use to create new experiences like are you guys. Seeing that in the alcohol space as well and is there are there any interesting Serta brand Marketplace Partnerships that. Taylor: [37:23] Yeah yeah we're doing a lot up there and we talked with a lot of what we consider not endemic partner so you know a recent one Netflix just wants to show called Final Table partnership with them where you know it is essentially, yeah they're answer to a food show type contest, where we basically paired wines that correspond with each of the different episode when we actually went through some of our Retail Partners and created in Thor display so taking online and offline, a creating a little bit of Piper on the show and then about some of the wines that are brought up in, it really looks at all aspects of the ordering process but also like what people are ordering at a local level write a report with Neil Finn in the past I think the biggest. Unlearning to be at our people really care about what's being made at a local level on a product. And we write a logo on it to 10% increase of sales for that product, English forget that the various craft breweries I'm really like to highlight that fact that he's around the corner from you. Jason: [38:48] And I feel like a glove just came off now. Wayne: [38:52] Well I mean we don't have as many local badges because I think some of our best stuff happens to be made in Scotland but I would argue that we also have some awesome brands that are local to the US. I wish you'd have local badges on them too and I know we actually do tell her. Taylor: [39:12] Yeah Ugg you got the badges think about you, you know when you're serving up something a consumer you mentioned earlier, I think that's an area where you going to see drizly and backed up in the next 6 to 12 months have only in and making sure they were putting right in front of the right consumer at the right time specially given you the the way it is you know that e-commerce World works today you're very limited Chopper and right thing in their basket you're so does the better we can do it helping push products at the browse grid. Are consumers to purchase the more likely they are to check out and continue in the shop with our platform. Jason: [39:56] Wayne not necessary enticing you to throw me under the bus unless you want to but in general like you guys feel like you're you have access to enough data and enough promotional opportunities via all these new touch points to do the kind of marketing, that you like to do or is there an opportunity for your partner's to do more. Wayne: [40:18] I would say we're getting there there's always room for more but but we've realized through some of these what I'm. Call Canada for spear of of the category the drizly. Instacart the Postmates you don't whole or the license are really always managed to put some of the product is that. They do tend to know more about the consumers they serve than some of the traditional retailers and so the data we can get from them is is really interesting for us we get to understand the notion of usage occasions but now we get to get into purchase occasion so, you know we spent a lot of time for additionally learning about when people consumer Brands but, knowing about when they buy them is also super interesting knowing about where they buy them is really interesting knowing about, in a high price point low price point all the different stuff that you can see comments release these particular channel to partnership. It's all new data for for the category but it certainly data that I think in the form of our strategy in a whole new way going for it. Scot: [41:26] Well it wouldn't be a Jason Scott show if we didn't talk about Amazon so. Can you sense Wayne with last do you know every startups worst nightmare has to go to build all this out and then Amazon says oh that's an interesting space let's go replicate what how do you guys answer. Taylor: [41:45] Yeah the Amazon car says everyone favorite. [41:51] We be crazy not to think about Amazon right they only had faith in every e-commerce or Marketplace or otherwise I'm just because of how successful they've been, I think it it honestly is it helpful to have them in the face and I don't use the word oil but I will because it helps build consumer confidence that your back to my earlier pointed you know you buying online went down the right way and with the right partner is a very legal transaction is something that you know makes the shopping. I think they were we've got an advantage is really in our Marketplace rights or our ability to show. And to your point of the 8 to 15 different retailers in a single location with that same commodity product, and then allowing the consumer to shop based off of what characteristics of that retailer are the most important to them whether it's Private Selection excetra Jana and I think it will be both are really proven and it's been one of our biggest most to is this is a highly regulated good right and drizly was built in its core, the handle does the supporting sale right from the software perspective other regulated so I think that you're just slapping on and alcohol category that's why we haven't not the number. Of instacart and Postmates some of the other companies out there because it's not just that right the very different shopping experience. [43:17] I'm not talking about the bottle of wine they can run into a shopping cart that you know, yeah I might drink half of and cook with half I'm talking about the alcohol specifically sale, and I think that's going to be our advantage now and in the dead moving or specially if you start to grow it our national retail. Wayne: [43:35] I mean Amazon is is testing this category and we we talked to them and then you know they do have availability through Prime now in Seattle through fresh in Illinois through Prime now I believe in in Sacramento and Southern child coming from what we understand we're Amazon has an opportunity to get better to tellers point on this you can't just add one more category and expect you to be successful, the proposition that consumers looking for when they go to a liquor store in it's obviously price is important but really selection and so. [44:13] You're the prime now facility were there for filling out of doesn't always have all the space that I think they would need to represent a wide enough assortment, including various sizes right some people want 175 some people want 375. You know big bottle small bottle for Matt about to challenge logistically that that I think anyone needs to overcome including Amazon to really build out an interesting proposition for, are spirits online particular at the marketplace model essentially lets me is the end user on the app. Columbus ZIP code say I'm interested in Bourbon and essentially yet. You know almost any bourbon you could think of from from the lowest price point all the way up to you know bottles that are approaching thousand $2,000 for. You know brand like maybe a copy that anyone should be looking for when you have that proposition and you have it almost. [45:15] Spell nationally this point it's how you start to see a lot of opportunity for e-commerce to, firstly when you're operating a very local level like Amazon or most of the retailers all right now you've got to you've got to think through that how do you how do you essentially provide. . assortment that people are looking for but also you know let people come into the top of the funnel at any sort of scale and sufficiency to to make this thing work like you could do or say or diapers or. You know any of them more traditional Goods that are available ubiquitously everywhere. Scot: [45:53] Yen into the drizly point. Example Amazon's done like you have 200 friendly Integrations with point-of-sale systems and then like Amazon pay hasn't had a lot of adoption with with retailers because it's kind of like you know. Hey at this feels really weird having Amazon kind some ways their scale. I think you heard them because they're not going to be very hard for me to build a network. Wayne: [46:21] Yeah I think I know you look on Prime now I think the experience for some of these third-party seller. Optimize the way presented and then you know I know car category either there's a lot of price for the disparity so I think consumers would expect someone to to see the price options but then also understand why, you know there are these different prices presented to them so early a challenge that at Amazon, I think we need to address her or think for a little bit more closely was they knows they look to scale and something like at 3 p.m. I'll only agree with you. Scot: [47:05] The big thing this happened in were, more mature meaning higher adoption categories is now Amazon competing themselves with private label right and you guys worry over at the au jus about amazonbasics beer or an Amazon basic vodka. Wayne: [47:23] I don't and I and the reason that I think we are we are not so concerned with something like that I digitally first private label brand with with someone like Amazon is that one is technically speaking there is this this rest of Market wall with that off so you can't necessarily create a, Brandon not make it available now Costco does have some really good trip propositions with Kirkland brand of backyard Kirkland brand tequila but you know I think when consumers are looking for Spirits in particular and beer, I think I'm looking for that brand story they looking for that experience you know this is. This is generally a more thought through purchasing you know that the price point is not that of your standard consumer guide and so. [48:14] You know we we have trust in Our Brands and we we really see the strength of our friends has. No fighting throw this in a potential disruption from private labeling and one in which I saw very very closely it play out where I was at. It's just it's just not as easy to enter to win in a private label proposition. Categories within the other category where you could directly Source manufacturer. Any other thing with private labeling is essentially you do have to buy it back from the distributor you can. Direct store so the various tax reform. Taylor: [48:54] Yeah and it's a double down on Wayne's plane really strongly believe the brand should one timeline you know they've done the brand building with the consumer they brought him down the car I think that's the kind of one big point to sit who is an e-commerce world as they need to continue to prove that value prop and buy that brand and that should be shot War. Ecommerce consumer as well go get some of the traditional channels that have always work, should be also augmented with coming to think that Wayne and his team are doing to really go about that Chopper and make sure that they end up being. Jason: [49:29] That's going to be interesting to see how it plays out you know one of the things that's always interesting to me in in the market is still really early and it's did you adoption curve like alcohol and Spirits is right now is that you can have a pretty fragmented market right so. Obviously been a bunch of time talking about drizly here is one of my readers that there's there's a ton of players trying to, when I a piece of the spacing and you know each with a slightly different go-to-market approach from your standpoint Lane do you have to, participate with all of them do you make some big bets on the ones you think are going to win like you know what is your strategy like early on when there isn't necessarily A. Wayne: [50:12] Yeah I mean we're still in that building phase of e-commerce for sure and in a lot of our time or the last year is just understanding. What's happening across the market alcohol is in a lot of ways of Barry it's early fragments as you said but it's also. Locally Tribbett so, you know we we understand who is going to be the best strategic group to align with the New York but that might not also be this the best guys to figure out who the partner when is Texas in the West Coast, the the play right now is continue to test and learn and I think that's, that's really consistent with anything you here in anybody need Commerce is constantly test. Billy learning and you get ready to Pivot really quickly as things change. But because there's no sort of clear National front-runner right now in in the space we need to figure out how to win it at every light at every level a lot of those levels are are hyperlocal. Taylor: [51:18] Come on Rainbow National front runner. Wayne: [51:22] The closest thing to a national franchise and about right now is is Total Wine. But even they don't truly you know have a presence in all 50 states 00. Yeah so we are we are definitely navigating the the ultra complex for sure. Scot: [51:44] Taylor have a start-up question for you if you guys have the school red bear as your logo I'm guessing why that's there but I don't want to make assumptions founding story about the drizly bear. Taylor: [51:55] I was why I was wondering when that question would come up you know that. I can tell you the name drizly actually came from. That is an option off the board as far as name goes and then very early on in life. Get a branding agent has become in and give us some marketing tips and tricks and feedback excetera and one of the things that they came up with shooting currently with this Presley not a lot of thought went into it after the first logo iteration with the Jersey Devil is done and I think it's something that deep down no one's ever fully understood but at this point in our life is what were known for, we've all become pretty pretty affectionate to the bear so the bear the bear will live on. Jason: [52:49] That that is awesome and is it works at that's going to be a great place to end it because it's happening again we've blown through all our allotted time but if folks have burning questions about the category let's keep the conversation going on Facebook and Twitter as always if you really enjoyed this episode we sure appreciate that that five star review on iTunes and as a reminder of you want me Jason and Scott in person in Palm Springs next week you can do it at you tell West and then it'll be a promo code, in the show notes for you but Wayne Taylor a real pleasure chatting with you and really grateful for your time today. Wayne: [53:27] Thank you guys just a lot of fun. Scot: [53:31] The end up before before we let you go if folks want to find you online are you guys realistic tweeters or snapchatters or instagrammers in any any business writing there that where people can find you. Wayne: [53:44] Can you find me an admin people on Twitter although I mostly just tweet about sports and things like that but what happened. Taylor: [53:54] When the big wings and I find him on LinkedIn meet me the same people in 86 on Twitter but we're we're LinkedIn. Scot: [54:02] Awesome we really appreciate guys taking time out of your busy day so join us on the show and. Jason: [54:07] Until next time happy conversing.

ceo new york director amazon spotify new year netflix texas canada world english google babies marketing west digital war russia chinese seattle market north carolina new jersey national south chief chefs illinois selling scotland game of thrones partnership target shop alcohol mvp walmart corporate partners id commerce southern ios west coast spirits paypal brands prime trend ecommerce thor integration emmy awards pivot guys bay area ebay aids revenue jersey sacramento consumer rolling fulfillment regional buddy bay marketplace crm anonymous foreign costco consumers gdp optimize surprised yang logistics uncharted bourbon palm springs guinness mandate goldberg american express goods pos alibaba conquest abilities unlearning beverage kroger strategic partnerships executive chairman nestle scot wineries instacart rr dh outsource kirkland ridley merchants google search syndicate zip fireside collateral chopper jersey devil wrigley retailer postmates diageo shopper sku albertsons product innovation serta coke zero braintree mlp captain morgan akita wisin drizly ok google jason scott neil finn total wine final table orissa biagio centreville docking bay wayne taylor tlx scot wingo etail west on the fringe tri counties

EP162 - Amazon Q4 2018 Earnings Hot Take

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2019 30:15

EP162 - Amazon Q4 2018 Earnings Hot Take Jason & Scot will be podcasting live from the eTail West which is held Feb 19-22 in sunny Palm Springs, CA. As a special gift to listeners, you can use the code JASONSCOT for 20% off. This episode is a hot take on Amazon Q4 2018 earnings Amazon Q4 Earnings Highlights $72.4BB, which is a 20% y/y increase $19.4B in Free cash flow Amazon grew North America 18% y/y and International 15% y/y, for a blended growth rate of 17% Unit growth decelerated to 14% from 15% in Q3 Revenue from brick and mortar down 3% Amazon Web Services - Grew 45% to $7.4B for the quarter and generated $2.2b in operating income which was up 61% y/y Marketplace 52% of units, down from 53% levels in Q2 and Q3 Wingo GMV estimate -> 150B GMV for the quarter. $450B GMV for the year ($300B GMV in North America). Amazon Ad Business - grew 95% y/y to $3.49B (Estimated $10B for the year) Pivotal estimates $38B by 2023 Jason & Scot will be podcasting live from the eTail West which is held Feb 19-22 in sunny Palm Springs, CA. As a special gift to listeners, you can use the code JASONSCOT for 20% off. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 162 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 31st, 2019. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Thursday January 31st 2019 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey Jason welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason big question it's -50 there in Chicago how are you hanging. Jason: [0:46] I am enjoying the modern technology of central heating so I'm doing I'm doing terrific my dog who hasn't had a walk outside in like 3 days is doing less well for MacGyver. Scot: [0:59] Your dog doesn't have four dogs can't take minus 50. Jason: [1:03] I really like this is a rescue dog from Detroit that thinks he's like a Southern California dog like he goes on strike below about 40 degrees. Scot: [1:13] Got it Caldwell. Earlier this evening Amazon announced their 4th quarter results that we've been on pins and needles waiting to see how they did so this episode is going to be exclusively Amazon news and we're going to give you a hot take on the result. But first Jason are going to be live podcasting from etail West which is held February 19th to 22nd at Palm Springs California and it's a special guest gift exclusive gift to our listeners you can use the code Jason Scott there's no and in there so j a s o n s c o t Scott with one t looks like Jason Scott is another way to think about it, for 20% off and we are going to put a link quick Link in the show notes for you to be able to apply for that and come to the show and see Jason I'd life podcasting would love to chat with you if you're going to be there. [2:11] So with that housekeeping all the way let's jump into Amazon results first I kind of wanted to frame the discussion so the companies have already announced we had Facebook and eBay come out and, Facebook really kind of exceeded expectations because they've been in this kind of poop storm of negativity and controversy that was interested or expecting it to be bad because advertisers was bailed on them. [2:39] Turns out if you have a way to get in front of customers people want then they don't really care about the controversy I guess, eBay's results were below expectations so so kind of another e-commerce company there and was eBay's results or a lot of talk about this kind of. End of 4th quarter slowed down so if you recall we had camera from Adobe on the show and Adobe has come out and said look it really kind of fell off a cliff kind of December 15th through to Christmas I needed to the back of the year they talked a lot about that where the holiday was semen along and then kind of died there towards the end which was interesting so the net net of that for them is there Marketplace crew 1% if you exclude the impact of foreign exchanges so a heading in and outs two days ago I believe I'm so heading into Amazon there's Otay people are a little kind of wobbly can I see some mixed results coming in to Amazon and where were they so that set up Jason wants you walk us through the high-level pieces. Jason: [3:42] Yeah well spoiler alert they landed very solidly like they basically had a complete beat they beat all the the analyst expectations so top line revenue came in at 72.4 billion, that was against a expectation of 71.9 billion and was a growth rate of 20% year-over-year, earnings per share came in at. A little over six bucks and the expectations were like 5:55 so that was a solid beat. Marker 02 [4:17] Last year they had a quarterly Revenue this quarter of like 60 billion so that means this year they added about 12 billion dollars in sales just in this one quarter so they continue to be clicking along. So if you look at an annualized basis for 2018 total revenue from Amazon comes in at 233 billion. Corso remind listeners. Ecommerce the revenue isn't really the most important number we like to talk about their gross merchandise value which I'm going to let Scott break down and in just a bit. But if you listen to Jeff talk. She's not as big a fan of the sort of Revenue and earnings metrics is he is that free cash flow metric so. [5:10] Yeah that's really the the metric the Amazon Rise Against is that hundred percent free cash flow and you know once again this was a good quarter for that, free cash flow more than doubled from 8.3 billion last year to 19.4 billion this year. So that's a first world problem you got to find a lot of place to spend all that loot. Scot: [5:30] Yeah but how's that possible Jason I thought Amazon wasn't problem. Jason: [5:34] Yeah it's almost like that some some misnomer from 10 years ago or something. Scot: [5:43] Fun fact I would call 19 billion dollars of free cash flow pretty not too shabby. Jason: [5:53] Yeah and the one I get now though to be honest I guess you're like a Amazon is not profitable what it What I Hear now which is also a misnomer is 100% of their profits from AWS. Scot: [6:04] Yeah yeah let's talk about that so is repealed the onion on on the the 800-pound gorilla that is Amazon overall North America grew 18% year-over-year and as a reminder to listeners we talked a lot about the e-commerce Baseline of 15% retail Baseline is 3 to 4% Amazon has historically clocked around kind of 20 to 30% so this is where the first quarter is when they've actually slowed a little bit and part of it is the concert is getting monstrous in the fourth quarter you mentioned a $12 increase your rear which is you know. [6:38] Adding a chunk of any other, retailer but they are specifically in Q4 starting to see things slow down because they've created these massive comps your ear and things like launch an echo now can create headwinds on that and then you also have to hide window when products move from one p to 3 p. Prepuce growing faster than one PS4 creates a headwind on Revenue growth cuz they collect a lot less from from third-party set also a like item going from 1 Peter 3 p as brands do things like hybrid that creates a little bit of slow down and rub you also. [7:13] So that being said North America grew 18% year-over-year International grew 15% year-over-year for Blended rate of about 17% on the retail side taking out a WIC etcetera overall they grew 20% but the retail pieces group of three bases 3% slower, that international number was a little bit of an acceleration which was good to see that they've been kind of facing some headwinds there on the international side so it's good to see that and then profit-wise in North America that took the 2.3 billion so the North America business inside of Amazon is profitable even so it is not true that that if you all the profits come from a Tab S but certainly the Lion's Share do and then International is still losing business money but it it kind of shrink the Lost 30% to 642 million so even an aggregate if you add up the North America and international the retail part of Amazon is still profitable including the marketplace so and that International Peace is on its path probability it's just so honking big is going to take a little while to get. [8:23] North American margins ticked up 60 basis points and that was attributed on the call to getting some really good leverage out of fulfillment center expenses so Amazon 2018 was a. Of time where Amazon you know they only Built a 15 to 20 centers I'm a percentage standpoint that was a pretty low capital expenditure year for them so instead of adding all the capacity they needed to to ship all the packages they utilize more of the film Center squeeze more out of them, so that being said another thing that I always watch is 2% of units that come from third parties this is the the the metric. Give around third-party versus turtle useful that was 52% which is a tick down slightly from 53% I wear it wasn't Q2 and Q3 reading the tea leaves that was probably driven by as a swing in the fourth quarter you know the the 1p kind of bumped up a little bit I believe because of all the private label that we Racine going on I think there's over a hundred fifty private label Brands and then what you call owned Brands so things like echoes in the whole X family, I think that pushes up that first party unit side during the holiday. I'm talking about 1% you're so not a lateral move. [9:51] One area of a little bit of concerned that for Wall Street is they look at this total unit gross and that decelerate a tad even at 14% that's down from last quarters 15% so yo a lot people asking how can unit growth be 14% but then they totally grew 17% so what you have is unit growth in ASP mix coming out a little bit higher to multiply together to give you like the total, so when Amazon on a quarterly basis doesn't give you the pieces you need to unpack the DMV astrix and I'll come back to that so what they do is in their annual report which will come out and I think they have another 30 to 45 days to put in your Port out then they will provide the mechanism for 410A backing into the DMV so. But astrix is I go to a model I've used over the years that that is relatively close so so what that model tells me is now. I'll say this is not an official number this is just kind of Scott napkin calculation to, I just give you an idea of the scale but we don't have to wait for the annual report and if you take Amazon's overall Revenue this quarter of 72 billion. AWS with 7.4 and you take that out and then if you also take out the other AD business you're left with 61 billion dollars of kind of retail Revenue. [11:18] So I use that to back into a 1 p.m. to 3 p mix and what I get is 52 billion and 1 p and then you're left with eight or nine billion dollars in revenue from creepy Amazon's take rate is about 10% so you have to multiply that by 10 so you end up with first party DMV of 52 billion third party DMV of 95 billion for a total of about 150 billion in the fourth quarter, global stamp again this is an approximation and we'll have a lot more clarity when they're in the report comes out more working into one of our new shows 6 interesting is if you take sat and soaked it with those of you that have her to say this before you know Amazon's easily twice as large as you think it is to take my calculations from q1 to Q4 I get an annual number of Total Gym v-force partying third-party F450 Glen Jason is you know Walmart is kind of it a 500 billion your Revenue rates we we talk a lot about how I think you agree with me but that's that's the better comp is Amazon's total gmbh versus Walmart sales and so so Walmart is still bigger than Amazon but I do think the lines are going to cross in 2019 I'm so that's going to be the first time somewhere in 2019 probably you wanted you to. [12:44] Yeah we'll be able to say that GMB to GMB Apples to Apples Amazon is bigger than Walmart that's going to be interesting to keep an eye on. [12:54] Last little bit on the marketplace side is Amazon it's kind of funny that press releases now are like 16 Pages cuz they usually put like a little. Of some highlights through the year and they have so many highlights now it's like 12 pages of highlights are they really highlights. I'm the only one that picked out of there that I hadn't seen release somewhere else I thought was hers would find interesting is the announced that 200,000 sellers on the third-party platform are now generating over $100,000 a year in GMT so I pre nursing small business platform there where you know if that's an international number but I would imagine it's split price 60% us 40% International and then correlated with that I've been seeing a lot of. Amazon's running a TV ad campaign and it shows a train out of an a bunch of Amazon Fulfillment boxes with third-party seller stuff on it so they're really kind of, camping up the third party aspected left. Jason: [13:55] Yeah it's always chuckle to read those highlights because you'll get like one highlight will be like. We added a PGA event to Amazon Prime video and then the next highlight will be and we sold a hundred million Alexa devices or so you don't seem seam super ration. Scot: [14:17] Can we handle the trillion workloads on the AWS cloud. Jason: [14:21] Exactly. [14:23] Yeah and the the Walmart Amazon is definitely becoming a horse race is pretty interesting and not just a reminder. A ton of Walmart's revenue is grocery even with the Whole Foods acquisition very little of Amazon's revenue is grocery inside. Amazon 30 crushing Walmart on General Merchandise Walmart's crushing Amazon grocery. It certainly is the case that Amazon's probably growing grocery a lot faster than Walmart's growing general merchandise so if that doesn't doesn't bode well for for Walmart in the. In the short term is those lines start to converge and then of course Amazon has all these other fabulous business so you know we mentioned, the AWS gets a lot of the the buzz that's that's not entirely unfair cuz that you know that they continue to be going gangbusters that you're getting there the. The clear market leader they have a huge weed over there their primary competitors Google and Microsoft. Until you do when you're that big and have that much market share it's really hard to grow fast but AWS still grew 45% for the quarter so that was. 7.4 billion in revenue and you know much more profitable business so that that's been off 2.2 billion in operating income which is up 61% year-over-year so. That is not a bad side hustle to have if your if your Amazon. [15:52] And then of course they they have this other increasingly big category that they still call other the big chunk of other is this advertising Revenue. Hopefully at some point in the not-too-distant future. This gets spun out as a separate number but other came in at 3.4 billion which is up almost 100% 95% from last year and so you know. If you think of that as. The primarily that ad business is actually the growth rate is starting to decelerate so lightly as they do start to get a critical mass but it's still a huge. Chunk of gross if you add up that the. Portion of other for the last four quarters that are likely add sales it's it seems pretty clear that it's over 10 billion and add sales and. [16:47] You know it is interesting it's like obviously becoming a much more important business for Amazon I think it was an analyst that counted how many times they mention the ad business on this call versus last year's call and last year it was like 12 mentions this year was 25 mentioned so it's getting more mindshare. And you know we're seeing all these wild projections of how fast I could grow so I think it was a new one out from pivotal research that said that by 2023. Their ad business could be a 38 billion dollar business and even more so than eight of us. Add business is hugely profitable and so you know if if they do grow that kind of trajectory is very likely that the ad business is is both bigger and more profitable than the AWS business in the next 5 years. Scot: [17:35] Yats commit arson to see if they can get it to be that size it at that pace it would be bigger than Facebook I believe without a SIM Facebook Stan. Jason: [17:44] Yeah it would be bigger than Facebook is now but yeah. Scot: [17:48] Episodes it's clear it's going to be a three-horse race so so it's going to be Google Facebook Amazon I think dirty bigger than Snapchat. Jason: [17:57] No I think they already are numbered if they hit 10 billion there they're probably number three. Scot: [18:01] Snapchat I think is a Twitter somewhere around there so hard like 6 or something. [18:07] Another part that I we always look at kind of your lie is that was all the past and this is kinda looking forward so Amazon you know the way they do things they don't give annual guidance so they do tell you how it's coming in the next quarter so their practices so looking towards 2019s the first quarter so the first thing they did as they kind of gave an overall warning which said hey 2018 we didn't spend a lot on centers industry, data centers and employees but we are going to ramp that up in 2019. [18:48] Unemployed fact that hit 675,000 people so I think in, the not-too-distant future in the next three or four years Out imagine to get to a million people unless they dramatically changed the the workforce switch to robots or something zipper that perspective last year capex grew 12% iron grew 14% so kind of signaling reading the tea leaves are I kind of got the vibe that is going to be more towards the high teens on those numbers may be excited, 120 kind of get the feeling again this is just kind of reading the body language which is very hard with Amazon to be totally wrong I get the feeling they almost felt constrained by fulfillment capability in the fourth quarter that the maybe maybe they left a little bit on the table cuz they they just couldn't get as much product in and out or something let me just be me while I have to see if any of the Wall Street analyst pick up. [19:42] So so that's kind of you know it'll be interesting I think the stock will be a little kind of muted because. While she keeps it when he comes on goes into a spending days until the groceries up so for fourth-quarter projections Amazon put out a range of 56 to 60 billion that was below the Wall Street consensus estimate of 61 billion that add. I'm at the midpoint that's 13.6% year-over-year growth, and the high point and gets up towards 15% then the guy did towards pretty much what Wall Street was expecting on. And then there a couple other tidbits executed since I'm going to have a couple to you go first. Jason: [20:25] I did want to mention like one specific thing that came up a little bit in the in the lower guidance was was what brought International is getting some traction there was recently a new e-commerce law that was passed in India that's going to be. Potentially very challenging for Amazon and Walmart and so I and I think Amazon called out several times that there's some uncertainty about their their speed there. Speed of growth in India as a result of this this new new regulation there. Scot: [21:03] It is such a size u.s. space companies can't do business in India if you've beautycounter read the headline. Jason: [21:08] Yeah if you like there's there's some ambiguity and how to get interpreted so people are hoping it's not that extreme but there's no version of it that's good news for for Amazon and Walmart who both invested a ton. In that market and you know you know I'm not going to get that clearly has good access as they were hoping to that market so that's interesting but even with that that sort of. You know what kind of muted level of enthusiasm that still puts Amazon's market cap white as of tonight at at like 840 billion and of course you know they did briefly go over a trillion last year but to put things in perspective Walmart who you talked about. Being larger than Amazon in terms of total revenue Walmart's market cap is like 278 billion tonight so so Amazon's market cap is the equivalent of the next seven largest retailers in the USA they're the equivalent of Walmart + Home Depot + Costco Buffalo's plus Walgreens plus TJ Maxx and Target which is pretty mind-boggling of you if you still think about it. Scot: [22:15] It's a girl thing so I Walmart overall I think Walmart's growing low-single digits is that right at all. Jason: [22:22] Yak like four. Scot: [22:23] So is that that's what it is it's you you look at one point time you know the order about the same size as best we can tell right now, Jambi perspective but you know what will she loves his growth and when you have a. 1 / 200 billion dollar business growing in the mid-teens there's not many. Accept apple and an Amazon that if you know to do that. Jason: [22:46] Yeah dumb president is pretty awesome to be then. So a couple other tidbits one thing that's getting a little bit of attention is you know they do not have a line item on the income statement for brick-and-mortar retail which is, mostly Whole Foods and so this what is the first quarter when they now have a complete year of, data from Whole Foods that is the first time that want the Amazon rather has his had sort of the true look at same-store sales comps and the look isn't entirely favorable so it looks like they're brick-and-mortar sales are down 3% from last year. And you know it it first you go huh does that mean Whole Foods is. [23:35] Shrinking which Whole Foods West facing some some possible but you know you also have to remember that that Amazon makes him aggressive price promotions in Whole Foods so the revenue from from some of those price promotions has some. Some impact on sales but the the big item that that Amazon talked about was. That when they do a by online curbside pickup from one of the the 60 Whole Food stores that supports that or they do delivery. In one of the market that supports that that Revenue gets recognized as e-commerce Revenue rather than brick-and-mortar Revenue so for them brick-and-mortar means. You you walk to the store and pick the fruit yourself instead of having a an Amazon pick our picket for you. [24:32] And so they're they're alleging that that that contributed to the the lower sail brick-and-mortar sales some of that sales just shifted from. From brick-and-mortar tab to digital in the in Amazon's version of the story but at the minimum it means. Those stores aren't like wildly growing and it it also means that the fleet of other brick-and-mortar stores that Walmart has put out there the. The increasing number of bookstores in nine go stores those still aren't having a material impact on revenue and. [25:07] So that was interesting. I did also you know it always comes up one of the big line items and cost in Amazon has every year and it always goes up by a big number is shipping so shipping cost went up 23% for the quarter. I'm as you pointed out earlier they shipped 14% more units so. [25:28] That accounts for you know a big chunk of that growth but also means their cost per unit had to creep up. And it's it's always interesting to me a UPS had their earnings call today as well they actually had a good. Good earnings call but but the. The headline to me was that the CEO of ups for the first time and knowledge that yes Amazon's a big customer but they also are a competitor and we track them as such and that's a. Basically a 180 from previous statements from UPS the day they really didn't think Amazon would be a competitor there's and that they purely saw them is. A customer and I always like to talk about the fact that UPS isn't growing fast enough, they're not growing a shipping capacity fast enough to accommodate all the growth Amazon getting much worse want to get so it's almost imperative for Amazon to have some of their own shipping capacity and really highlighting that I sort of backed into do UPS as package number for 2018 and it looks like UPS shipped in in North America UPS shipped 1.5% less packages this year than they did last year so I wonder if UPS is ability to deliver, some of their own packages which you know now they estimate that about 12% of their total volume if that's starting to have them internally impact on UPS. Scot: [26:53] When I drive to work I go through a couple interstates and on a daily basis I C 5 + Prime delivery Vans the stasis is crazy. Jason: [27:07] And I'm surprised like I mean aren't you in like autopilot and you're reading a book or something while you got so I'm surprised you can see them. Scot: [27:13] I'm counting I just kind of play Amazon smile bingo. Jason: [27:17] I like it. Scot: [27:22] Cook's one of the other tidbits to the more detailed Wall Street reports will come out in the morning I'll treat anything that's kind of interesting there but the ones I saw they do hot take kind of thing as well I saw her folks kind of. Reappearing in sang Hey we're in a we are really interesting are overweight or whatever they're the recommendation is so it looks like everyone's bumping up their price targets to kind of the $2,500 share range which is it comes true over the next 12 months or so that'll put Amazon squarely back into that trillion-dollar club. [27:58] Summarize I would say Amazon had a great quarter. It was a really nice worth quarter but it is interesting you know over the years having all this for a while Amazon's always been growing accutest 3x clip of e-commerce and now at a 70 70 billion dollar quarter ton of a scale though the rule of large numbers is kind of catching up to them and they're starting to kind of get closer into that mid-teens e-commerce procrit so you know it's munition to see, what does Amazon do to accelerate that do they care a lot of noise around the healthcare business and some other things that the Amazon to get into you than just wrapped up that. When you're when you're clocking along that at over 250 billion dollars, you have to take big swings at at the plates are the kinds of things are going to go through and disrupt are going to be there got to be a hundred billion dollar kind of opportunities for them to really move the needle and get that growth going to be, reversing the see what they do to recover. Jason: [29:03] Yeah I'm looking forward to watching it and podcasting about it and that's going to be a perfect place to leave it because it's happening again we've used up all our allotted time as always if you have any questions or comments about the show you can keep the dialogue going on our Facebook page or you can hit us I just got a ride up on Twitter of course we always appreciate those five star reviews on iTunes and is a reminder that there's a chance to meet us in person if you're interested in attending the etail West show in Sunny Palm Desert this month so as a reminder for listeners we have that special promo code Jason Scott Jason Scott and that'll get you 20% off on your mission it's shaping up to be a really good show and I will put a link for registration in the show notes. Scot: [29:53] Thanks for joining us everyone. Jason: [29:55] Until next time happy commercing.

EP015 - eBags Peter Cobb, Co-Founder