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2 episodes with Fazal
2 episodes with Fazal
2 episodes with Fazal
2 episodes with Fazal
Send us a textToday's conversation with Naeem Fazal, author of "Tomorrow Needs You: Seeing Beauty When You Feel Hopeless," explores finding beauty and hope amid trauma and darkness, offering a powerful message of transformation for anyone feeling hopeless.• Naeem shares his extraordinary testimony of encountering Jesus supernaturally after growing up Muslim in Kuwait.• The concept that "yesterday has forgotten you" challenges us to reconcile rather than rehearse our past trauma.• We can either live conserving the past or creating the future – only the future contains hope.• Beauty serves as the solution to fear when we make something bigger in front of us than the fear inside us (Psalm 16:8).• Perfect love casts out fear, showing that faith alone isn't the answer to overcoming our deepest anxieties (1 John 4).• Creating beauty requires loving what you're creating, whether it's families, art, or relationships.• God loves seeing us grow through all stages of development, even the messy and awkward parts.• Expressing joy represents one of our most vulnerable acts, but is essential for healing.• Like Jesus, who endured the cross for the joy set before him, we must put joy before us to endure our challenges.Order Naeem Fazal's books: Tomorrow Needs You and Ex-MuslimVisit Naeem's website: Naeem FazalListen to Naeem's TED Talk: The Power of BeautyListen to Naeem's Message: Your Part in the Biggest StorySupport the showBegin Your Heartlifter's Journey: Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide. Download the "Overcoming Hurtful Words" Study Guide PDF: BECOMING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International
The panel "The Futures of War and the Military" is part of the “Climate Change and the Futures of War and Peace” conference, organized by the Centre FrancoPaix of the Raoul Dandurand Chair, the Climate Security Association of Canada and the Information Integrity Lab of the University of Ottawa.With:Duncan Depledge, Loughborough UniversityAnselm Vogler, Harvard UniversityTanisha M. Fazal, University of MinnesotaVirginia Page Fortna, Columbia UniversityEmil Havstrup, the Clingendael InstituteDonna Dupont, Purple CompassChair: Katie Woodward, CCASCOE
University of Minnesota's Professor Tanisha Fazal joins the Values & Interests podcast to discuss shifting geopolitical norms in a moment of global transition. For more, please go to: https://carnegiecouncil.co/values-interests-fazal
This episode features Ijeoma Oluo, author of Be a Revolution, in conversation with author Hanif Fazal at the 2024 Portland Book Festival.
Hussein's travel startup was doing $10s of millions when COVID hit. His revenue didn't just go to zero, it went negative. There were more customers asking for refunds than new sales. He was 4 months from running out of money.He ended up making a complete pivot, he changed the company's name from SnapTravel to Super.com. He went from travel to fintech and launched a banking card. It seems like a strange pivot —but through deep research he'd realized what his customers truly needed. They needed more money—not for travel or vacations—but for every day life.The new card helped customers earn points and rewards, it helped them save on everyday expenses. The pain was so acute and the solution so perfect, that just 3 years later, Super.com is doing $150M in ARR.Like Hussein said, he got 50 'no's from VCs for every 'yes' he got. He saw his business grow and then crumble over night. He was literally going to zero. But he turned it all around. Now he's not just growing, he's profitable now.And here's how it went down.Why you should listen:How to think from first principles to figure out the right product expansion.Why cross-selling is much harder than you think, and how to make it work.Why finding an unfair advantage is key to scaling a startup.How to use actual customer behavior to understand what customers truly want.Why testing and validating ideas through smoke tests is essential.KeywordsSuper.com, SnapTravel, COVID-19, travel industry, pricing strategies, customer needs, market fit, entrepreneurship, AI, business growth, COVID-19, resilience, travel industry, financial innovation, membership model, customer insights, entrepreneurship, investor relations, business strategy, cross-sellingTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro (00:02:39) The original startup: Snap Travel(00:08:40) Why a great user interface is a big edge(00:11:26) How to acquire customers(00:13:30) When your entire hypothesis is wrong(00:22:52) Meeting Steph Curry(00:29:03) Nearly crashing to zero-- and going bankrupt(00:33:51) Starting over and rebranding(00:42:42) Creating the Fastest Growing Membership Program(00:52:17) Finding Product Market Fit(01:00:00) One Piece of AdviceSend me a message to let me know what you think!
From the mean streets of Libertyville to the slightly meaner streets of Happy Harbor, Rhode Island, with a slight detour into New York City by night. The post Ep. 147 – Zehra Fazal first appeared on Fancy Pants Gangsters.
FreshEd started a membership community and we want you to join for as little as $10/month. https://freshedpodcast.com/support/ -- Today Fazal Rizvi joins me to talk about his forthcoming book entitled Globalization and Educational Futures. Fazal revisits the rise of the popular discourses of globalization, examines many its discontents, and suggests nonetheless that it is too hasty to imagine its total demise. Fazal Rizvi is Emeritus Professor in Global Studies of Education at the University of Melbourne, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. https://freshedpodcast.com/378-rizvi/ -- Get in touch! Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast Facebook: FreshEd Email: info@freshedpodcast.com
Holding on and Keeping Steadfast | Jumuah Khutbah by Fazal BariBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/learn-about-islam--5484193/support.
In the latest episode of The Food Professor Podcast, presented by Caddle, we welcome a special guest, Zeeshan Fazal, Regional Director and Agrifood expert from Export Development Canada (EDC). Recorded live at the SIAL food innovation show in Montreal, Zeeshan explains how EDC supports Canadian companies in expanding their reach beyond borders, including into the United States, by providing financial tools, trade expertise, and valuable market connections.Michael, joining from Chicago, shares his experiences in the Windy City's vibrant food scene, recounting a visit to El Che restaurant and commenting on Chicago's competitive food service industry. He also reminds listeners about the upcoming Coffee Association of Canada conference on November 14th in Markham, where tickets quickly sell out.The episode focuses on critical industry topics, including the staggering waste in Canada's dairy sector, with over 6 billion litres of milk dumped since 2012, as highlighted in a recent ScienceDirect study. The hosts also touch on Canada-India trade relations' complexities and challenges. The launch of Maple Leaf's new pork division, Canada Packers, is also discussed, followed by commentary on the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, which signals growing concerns about the competitiveness of Canada's agrifood sector.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924003100?dgcid=coauthorhttps://coffeeassoc.com/annual-conference/ About ZeeshanZeeshan Fazal is a Regional Manager at EDC, responsible for a team of Relationship Managers supporting Canadian companies to penetrate, grow and succeed internationally. He is also responsible to strategically increase EDC's support to Québec companies in Agriculture and Agrifood sectors.Mr. Fazal has significant experience in assisting Manufacturing, Technology and Innovation companies to go, grow and succeed internationally. Prior to his appointment to the Business Development team, Mr. Fazal held various underwriting positions for Accounts Receivable Insurance, Bank Guarantees and Loan Guarantees. He was also a Lean Sustainability Advisor where he collaborated closely with internal stakeholders to help lead projects, improve operational efficiencies and client communication processes. 514-876-7115 zfazal@edc.ca edc.ca Outside of EDC, Mr. Fazal was a lecturer at McGill University where he taught International Finance, Corporate Finance and Financial Statement Analysis. Most recently, he also taught a course on Business Valuation at the Smith School of Business at Queens University. Furthermore, he taught CITP professional designation courses on Global Value Chain and International Trade Finance. About EDCExport Development Canada is Canada's export credit agency. We are dedicated to helping Canadian companies, of all sizes, go, grow and succeed beyond our borders. As international risk experts, we provide them with knowledge, financing, insurance and connections. We also provide financial solutions to global companies to facilitate and grow purchases from Canadian companies. We take on risk, so they can take on the world. Learn more at www.edc.ca. Mr. Fazal holds a Master of Business Administration from the Smith School of Management (Queens University), a bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting and Biology from McGill University. He is also a Certified International Trade Professional (CITP | FIBP). The Food Professor #podcast is presented by Caddle. About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph's Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre's Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa. Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada's Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael's cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.
On this week's episode, actress trapped in a corporate marketer's body, Tanya Fazal, tells us about the time she went to a bar to apply for a job, struck up a convo with a patron, went to a concert with him instead, and found out that new friend was Micheal Imperioli!Check out Tanya on InstagramHave fun like Tanya? Donate to La MamaThis week's Rachel's Recs: Summer Streets and The Crosby BarWhat did you think of this week's episode?They Had Fun on Instagram, YouTube, and our website
University of Minnesota professor Tanisha Fazal discusses her new book, "Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War." In the book, she highlights how modern advancements in military medicine reduce American fatalities but lead to underestimations of war costs, which have long-lasting impacts on veterans, their families, and the U.S. Treasury. Dr. Fazal joins Good Authority to discuss the shifting ratio of wounded to killed, unforeseen expenses such as Civil War pensions, and how the U.S. can more effectively estimate the financial costs of wars.
Hosts Gregg Masters and Fred Goldstein welcome Dr. Fazal Khan, MD, JD. Dr. Khan serves as the department chair for population health and professor of health law, policy, and management. Dr. Khan brings a wealth of expertise from his tenure at the University of Georgia School of Law, where his scholarly pursuits and pedagogical endeavors have centered on the intersection of law, healthcare, artificial intelligence, technology, and ethics. To stream our Station live 24/7 visit www.HealthcareNOWRadio.com or ask your Smart Device to “….Play Healthcare NOW Radio”. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased long-term, downstream costs of war with profound consequences for global politics in an era of heightened great power competition. In Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War (Oxford UP, 2024), Tanisha Fazal traces the modern history of medical treatment and casualty rates in American conflicts from the Civil War to the more recent counterinsurgency wars. As she shows, wars became increasingly survivable for wounded troops, to the point now where a large majority of wounded soldiers survive. Yet the human and financial implications of this steep increase in the wounded-to-killed ratio are dramatic, and her powerful analysis of this shift provides a necessary corrective to how we understand the costs of war. For each major conflict, Fazal analyzes the weapons used, injuries sustained, and policies put in place for veterans' care and pensions. As she argues, these improvements have significant financial and deeply personal implications for the returned wounded and their families, as well as the US government and its citizenry. Fazal's analysis highlights the significance of policymakers underestimating the costs of war, which in turn makes it easier both to initiate and continue military action abroad, contributing to Americas' penchant for engaging in so-called "endless wars." Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict. In addition to her new book, she is the author of two award-winning books and numerous articles in academic and policy journals. From 2021-2023, she was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day
SNEAK PREVIEW!! On May 1st, BETWEEN TAKES with AMANDA TROOP AND ZEHRA FAZAL drops. Since you subscribe to ALL OVER VO, I think you'd really love the insight and the comedy that runs throughout this unique show. Enjoy! You can subscribe to BETWEEN TAKES on Disctopia HERE .
Danielle and Hanif discuss the life events that impacted Hanif so greatly that he co-founded the Center For Equity and Inclusion. Born to a father of Indian descent from Tanzania, and a Mexican-American mother, Hanif breaks down how being a person of color has affected his identity in every space he's occupied in life. Also, how his parents' desire to have their children assimilate into American culture caused a lot of confusion concerning how he should feel about his mixed background. For these reasons and more, he became intensely set on teaching others how we can make schools, workplaces, homes, and communities feel more accepting and comfortable regardless of someone's gender, sexual orientation, etc. Danielle asks Hanif small, actionable steps we can all take immediately if we want to be a part of the movement towards inclusive spaces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Fazal Dasankop shares his journey of becoming a Turkish citizen through property investment. He highlights the appeal of Istanbul, the comprehensive services provided by Property Turkey, and their innovative ventures like REITs and the Investor Club. Fazal expresses his gratitude and offers advice for potential buyers, emphasizing the trustworthiness of Property Turkey. The discussion covers embracing Turkish culture, citizenship, and future plans.Timestamps:(00:00) - Introduction: Fazal's journey(04:05) - Becoming Turkish: Istanbul's Attraction(09:15) - Choosing Property Turkey: Expertise and services(14:45) - Property Turkey Ventures: REIT, Investor Club(22:30) - Gratitude & Advice: Fazal's insights(25:00) - Embracing Turkish Culture & Citizenship(27:34) - Outro
In this week's conversation, Varun Duggirala and Ali Fazal take us on a journey through Ali's memories of childhood to his incredible journey as an actor. He gets candid about how he still feels like a kid in front of the camera, his unique perspective on life's 4 beat rhythm opens up about his mental health and his take on how social media is gradually turning us into slaves of technology and more! Ali Fazal is an actor, producer and model known for his versatile performances in both Bollywood and international projects. Fazal made his acting debut in 2008 with a small role in the film "3 Idiots," but his breakthrough came with the film "Fukrey" (2013). His international recognition grew with his portrayal of Abdul Karim in "Victoria & Abdul" (2017). He has also appeared in multiple hit web series like the Amazon Prime Video series "Mirzapur" (2018) which gained him immense popularity. In 2021, he started his own film production company named ‘Pushing Buttons Studios' with his wife and actor, Richa Chadha. You can Order Varun's book “Everything is out of syllabus: An instruction manual for life & work “ at https://amzn.to/335QKow Follow Varun across social media platforms @VarunDuggi https://www.instagram.com/varunduggi/ https://www.youtube.com/c/VarunDuggi https://twitter.com/varunduggi And for a weekly download of mind musings and recommendations subscribe to his newsletter “Unschooled with Varun Duggirlala” at https://varunduggi.substack.com About the show “Take a Pause with Varun Duggirala” is a twice a week podcast to learn, share and unlock insights to survive and thrive in life as an adult, leader, parent and human being. It's built on the belief that… “I know being an adult is a struggle, but we're all on different sides of the same boat, and if we share what we're experiencing and learn from each other, then Adulting can be as nostalgic and fun as childhood often seems”. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/take-a-pause-varun-duggi/message
Create the Future - Summer Series - Naeen Fazal - August 27, 2023
The year is 2008. Hussein Fazal just quit his tech job to co-found AdParlor, which built marketing campaigns to run on Facebook. He didn't know if it would work but decided to give it a shot. Hussein sold the company in 2011, stayed on as CEO for a few years, and then, in 2016, launched Snaptravel, a discount hotel reservation service that has saved consumers well over $150 Million. But unlike most companies, for their first 100 customers Hussein didn't write a single line of code. Today, he joins to share his journey as an entrepreneur and how he even got Steph Curry to back his company.Twitter of Host (@mbitpodcast): Shamus MadanTwitter of Guest (@hussein_fazal): Hussein Fazal Learn more about Super.com at well...you guessed it...Super.com
The Matt McNeil Show - AM950 The Progressive Voice of Minnesota
Tanisha Fazal is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Hey research and teaching focus on sovereignty, international law, medical care in conflict zones, and armed conflict. From 2021–2023, she is also an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
Whether you're looking to apply for a promotion or move to a different company, having an optimized resume is the first and probably the most important step. Your resume will dictate whether you get called in for an interview so learning how to optimize it is going to be key for you. My guest, Zarla, has been helping candidates land their dream job, and companies find the best top talent for their organization. Today, she shares best practices for a bulletproof resume and LinkedIn profile to help you turbocharge your professional profile. ---------- RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
In this episode, Jay, Rohan, & Fazal react to the recent news that Kyrie Irving is trying to recruit Lakers superstar LeBron James to Dallas to join he and Luka Dončić on the Mavericks. They talk about what motivations all parties involved in this rumor have in putting this story out there, and how despite the new CBA rules, if you have a chance to add LeBron James you do it immediately. They discuss that while this is extremely unlikely, it does say a few things, namely that Kyrie Irving views Dallas a place where he can build something, as well as the fact that the Mavericks' infrastructure of Jason Kidd and Nico Harrison may finally be paying off in making them a destination for players. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mavsfilmroom/message
In this episode Jay, Rohan, and Fazal talk about recent changes the Mavs have made in their front office and front bench coaching staff. They first discuss the addition of former Utah Jazz executive Dennis Lindsey as a senior consultant to Nico Harrison in the front office. They discuss how the Mavs have a small front office and that they do lack some seasoned veterans in the room with Nico Harrison still being so new to the job. They also talk about the recent news of the Mavs choosing not to bring back front bench assistant coach Greg St. Jean. They mainly talk about how getting a better tactician to help Jason Kidd is paramount and who in that vain might be a candidate to replace him, namely Frank Vogel, Stephen Silas, and Mike D'Antoni. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mavsfilmroom/message
In this episode, Jay, Rohan, Fazal, and Vinay get together to discuss the sad end to the Mavs season, which concluded with a 138-117 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. The Mavs finished the season 38-44 as the 11th seed in the Western Conference, missing the playoffs entirely. They discuss the abrupt decision the organization made to tank the last two games of the season, the exaggerated reaction it generated among certain members of the media, and what it means for the Mavs to have an 80% chance of keeping their draft pick this summer, as a result of that decision. They also talk about recent reports that suggest the Mavs may look to trade their draft pick for a more established player, and debate whether such a decision is beneficial to the Mavs in the long term. Finally they also go through some other monumental questions the Mavs face this offseason including re-signing Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić's happiness. To this end, they also recap comments made by Luka in his exit interview where he went out of his way to dispel the notion that he was growing restless in Dallas. Safe to say, this is one of the most important summers in franchise history. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mavsfilmroom/message
In this episode, Rohan, Fazal, and Vinay discuss the Mavs' 123-119 victory over the Sacramento Kings, which kept their play-in hopes alive for the moment. They also talk about the long media session held by Mavs owner Mark Cuban before the game, which produced many bulletin-board quotes about Jalen Brunson Kyrie Irving, and Christian Wood. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mavsfilmroom/message
Would you still take a client who was 20 mins late, had multiple confirmations & then blamed you for lack of communication? Join host Cryistal Chaos as she dives into her interactions with "TikTok famous" stylist Leda Fazal. What led to the interview being cancelled & the appalling things that Leda had to say about other TikTokers in between. Email your stories here - chaosaggravated@gmail.com Follow on Insta - @cryistalchaos @aggravatedchaos Receipts can be found on the podcast Instagram page. Find the patent link here Link to Tristans video where she WAS included here
In this episode, Jay, Rohan, Fazal, and Vinay get together to discuss the consecutive back-breaking losses the Mavericks suffered to the Charlotte Hornets over this past weekend, to drop them to three games under .500 and firmly out of the play-in range. They come to terms with the increasingly likely scenario of the Mavs missing the playoffs altogether and instead contending for a top draft pick. They talk about how nobody could have predicted this unimaginable scenario after last year's Western Conference Finals run and try to diagnose how the Mavs got here. They also comment on the bad-faith criticism Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving are receiving as a result of this poor season. Finally, they take a look at the draft lottery and explain where the Mavs stand, and what needs to happen for the Mavs to land a top-10 pick in this year's NBA Draft. It's Joever. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mavsfilmroom/message
In this episode, Vinay, Rohan, and Fazal chat with other Mavs fans about another frustrating loss to the Memphis Grizzlies which sent the team to a sub-.500 record at 34-35. The Mavs have also played the last two games without Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving. With only 13 games left to play in the regular season, things are bleak within the fanbase. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mavsfilmroom/message
This Episode we interview Josh March, Gunnar Edwards, Fazal Farooq about their take on being a Gym Owner. Welcome to the Gym Lords Podcast, where we talk with successful gym owners to hear what they're doing that is working RIGHT NOW, and to hear lessons and failures they've learned along the way. We would love to share your story! If you'd like to be featured on the podcast, fill out the form on the link below. https://gymlaunchsecrets.com/podcast
In this episode Jay, Rohan, Fazal, and Vinay preview the Mavs' final 22 games post-All-Star break. They discuss the growing chemistry between Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving, the signing of Justin Holiday, the defensive confers despite Maxi Kleber's return, and their record goals for the end of the regular season. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mavsfilmroom/message
In this episode, Jay, Vinay, and Fazal let out their frustrations after the Mavs fell to the Sacramento Kings 133-128 in overtime in the debut of the Luka Dončić - Kyrie Irving duo. They also react to the news that Terrence Ross will be signing with he Phoenix Suns after it was reported earlier that the Mavericks were the frontrunner for his services. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mavsfilmroom/message
In this episode, Jay, Rohan, Fazal, and Vinay recap Luka Dončić's fourth 50+ point scoring performance this season, a 53-point, 8-rebound, 5-assist effort against the Detroit Pistons. They analyze what it says about the Mavs' roster that they needed a Herculean scoring effort from Luka to beat the worst team in the league. This leads them into a discussion about the latest trade rumors surrounding the Mavs, which includes names like D'Angelo Russell, Bojan Bogdanovic, and more recently, Dorian Finney-Smith. They give their takes on how the Mavs should approach the trade deadline as the franchise looks to balance short-term improvement with much-needed future changes. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mavsfilmroom/message
EP301 - Annual Predictions, NRF Big Show, Year End Recap This ended up being a slightly longer than usual episode, sorry! If we had more time, we'd make a shorter podcast (to paraphrase Mark Twain). So here are some timecodes if you want to jump ahead: Recap of the NRF Big Show 1:27 Recap of 2022 Holiday and Full Year Results 22:43 2022 Predictions Scoring 30:34 2023 Predictions 54:51 2022 Predictions Recap Jason: NFTs, Web 3, Metaverse, and Ultrafast delivery services are all overhyped and don't deliver meaningful commerce revenue in 2022. Yes Shein exceeds $30B in annual sales, disrupting apparel industry Yes Adoption of BNPL services slows down to less than 15% CAGR in 2022. Yes Amazon opens more than 100 Amazon Fresh grocery stores No Last Mile evolves Veho, X-Delivery, shipium, or Instacart gets aquired No Jason Total Score: 3 of 5 Scot: Amazon launches a competitor to Shopify webstore, possibly via a headless solution on AWS No Amazon wins ultra-fast delivery. Gopuff, Gorilla, or Jokr goes out of business in 2022 Yes Metaverse gets lots of buzz but no revenue Yes Livestream commerce goes mainstream in the US No Fabric gets acquired No Scot Total Score: 2 of 5 Jason pulls out the rare win! 2023 Predictions Jason: At least 2 retail bankruptcies (besides Party City) BNPL Consolidation (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay. Sezzle) – at least one merges/exits US or BNPL. Shopify launches an ad product such as a retail media network Meta/Google/TikTok lose ad share to new social media platforms and retail media networks. Live Streaming Commerce Still not meaningful in US in 2023 (less than 5% of social commerce in US) Scot: Amazon uses this 2022 setback/slowdown/reversion to the mean for a public resetting of expectations, but behind the scenes they take share and raise the bar on shipping Shopify is acquired An innovation in e-commerce powered by ai (gpt4) surprises us by how fast it's adopted and how cool it is E-commerce accelerates back to the mean in 2H after a mean regression in 1H. E-com returns 10-15% growth rates. Sephora and/or Ulta move to a subscription model for new product discovery ChatGPT “based on trends and current developments in e-commerce, it is likely that we will see continued growth and expansion in the industry, with an emphasis on mobile commerce, personalize shopping experiences, and increased use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Additionally, there may be an increased focus on issues such as sustainability and social responsibility in e-commerce” Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 301 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 19th, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 301 being recorded on Thursday January 19th I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scott showed listeners Jason I was looking in our in my podcast app I'm an iPhone user says looking in the Apple podcast app, we had a review in six months so I thought of the top of the show here we would ask folks if you enjoy the show we sure would appreciate a review if you are in that player you go into the app you find our podcast scroll down a fair amount because we have so many episodes about four Scrolls I would estimate and then right there you'll see the Low Five Stars we would love a five star review or any review that you'd like to leave that would be most appreciated, we do this for the reviews so we appreciate it. Jason: [1:21] Yeah I would just add that makes a great New Year's resolution because you can literally accomplish it 5 minutes after you met. Scot: [1:27] Yeah and you get a dopamine hit and feel feel better about yourself sand Jason and I will be very happy, Jason today we are going to talk about two of my favorite topics so number one you just got back from the NRF Big Show and then we are belated with our predictions and recap for last year's predictions so we're going to sneak that in here we're still in January so I still think we're kind of in the new year a little little close here recording on the 19th but I think we're still in that window, so how I was not able to make it at in our F this year but you did and I look forward to hearing what you saw there. Jason: [2:07] Yeah yeah it was a good time obviously the biggest efficiency was your absence. But for any newer listeners that haven't been there before National Retail federation's in Trade Organization represents the retail industry and and this is their big event every year this is a hundred year old show, that is always at the Jacobs Javits Center in Manhattan in mid-January usually in the middle of a blizzard. Um so so a bunch of things worked in our favor this year during the last couple covid years the Javits Center got remodeled and so. The main areas where they do Keynotes and a lot of the big presentations and content are now like a new very nice facility that's very comfortable. And it was unseasonable e nice weather so it was kind of like 30s and 40s and clear no no snow no no blizzard to have to fly home in. Scot: [3:05] That's good. Jason: [3:07] So that got things kicked off on the right foot and then to me the most exciting thing was just the vibrancy, I don't think they've published the final attendance number but I'm pretty confident it's going to be just a smidge north of their 2020 attendance so, that you know given all the things that went on in the last couple of years being positive against your last pre coded year seems pretty good definitely felt like there was a lot of energy people were really happy to be there, and I was particularly pleased because. Last year was not a great year they tried to have the show last year there was just a big pain demick spike in New York right before the show so a lot of exhibitors. Publicly pulled out other exhibitors quietly pulled out and just didn't show and so you know it was kind of this weird thing where they had. Um you know a somewhat empty Spartan giant trade Joe for where they you know they frankly made a bunch of exhibitors still come in spite of the fact that there weren't very many, attendees for them to talk to, several of the Keynotes didn't show up and came via Zoom so it was it was not a good event last year and I was a little worried that that you know people that were forced to participate last year would be resentful and less interested in coming back. But it appears like we're back to normal. Scot: [4:33] This retail thing is catching on. Jason: [4:35] Yeah yeah it's not going away. So a couple of the big trends and we won't go into depth in any of these but you know maybe some of these will come up as topics in subsequent podcast. [4:49] They're the last couple shows there's there there have always been what I'll call digital shelves like electronic fact tags everybody knows I always like to talk about video displays on shelf Edge smart shelf so that know, um what inventory they have on them and. They get incrementally better every year so there were a lot more of them this year they were all better and cheaper. For a variety of reasons I still don't think 20:23 is going to be the year that they become. Super common in the wild but the tech is getting better a related Tech that seems like it has a lot of new vendors in this space is what I call in-store analytics so that's using cameras and computer vision too, measure Shoppers in the store and kind of like Google analytics for your your store again I'm not expecting huge deployments this year but it's, the computer vision technology is just getting more and more amazing and so that the insights that these things can get from relatively few cheap cameras keeps getting better. Um there's a lot of automation at this show so you know there's the usual. Auto store and perfect pick which are two of the big automated Warehouse Systems but there are a lot of other. [6:08] Startup automation things that could bring automated picking to store fulfillment or small fulfillment centers or. Pick to light systems and gloves like a lot of. Get more efficient about fulfilling omni-channel order stuff so automation was a big theme. Another thing that got a lot of space and signage at the show was what all broadly call headless Commerce, so Shopify made a big announcement right before the show that they were releasing a new offering called Shopify Commerce components and so this is kind of a. Upmarket headless version of Shopify Shopify has always been kind of a monolithic web app that you know was a super good fit for very small start-up companies, um and you know some of which have grown to be quite large on the platform, and they've always had a second offering called Shopify plus which was. Intended to be more Enterprise features but the plus mostly meant more Enterprise sales features not necessarily a lot more Enterprise, features in the in the platform and so this new offering seems like. [7:27] You know a pretty evolved set of apis and as a we've talked about in a previous episode of this show, fine but they sometimes called the mock principles, so they had a big booth that was mostly focused on this Shopify Commerce components, Salesforce has a very similar offering they already are kind of more enterprise-e and so they were there and then there's a, I want to call my startup they've been around for a while now so I'm not sure it's fair to call it a start-up but newer more modern Commerce platform. It's called Commerce tools in the chief strategy officer, from from from Commerce tools Kelly has been on our show before they had a huge presence a big booth and sponsored a bunch of stuff so there were between Shopify Salesforce and commerce tools, you definitely got a strong headless vibe in the show and then for old timers, the trade show floor is divided into three sections there's an innovation Center which is all new startups there we had a great Innovation Center this year was mostly International companies so I companies from Israel companies from France, there were very small startup showing some pretty cool Tech there's the upstairs trade show for which is all the. [8:56] Kind of incumbent Legacy vendors the Microsoft's the oracles the ncr's, all the big players with a really big boost and then the more digital players that you know they might exhibit it shop talk or would have exhibited it at shop dot org in the past, they're in the downstairs exhibit hall and it all this is not true but it felt like this year one of the rules that was in place to exhibit at the downstairs exhibit hall is you had to rename your url to end in dot AI. [9:30] Every every single vendor downstairs. Was you know some some execution of AI and some of them were super interesting and, I think we'll talk about this later but I'm very optimistic will be a big part of the Commerce ecosystem this year and some of them are, you know pretty speculative and far-fetched so so you know a good breath of everything and then I'll sum all that up that's what the floor look like the content you know is mostly, some some decent key notes from from Big retailers and the problem with key notes from the CEOs of big retards is they're not necessarily going to share anything. [10:14] Proprietary or new insightful like it's kind of interesting to hear their their philosophies but like I don't tend to learn a lot that I'm going to use, um in my day-to-day gig from the content sessions and in our f, um but what I do love is talking to all the people in the halls and aisles and by far you know kind of trying to take everyone's temperature that I could I could get time with the overwhelming consensus was, this is 2023 is going to be a really uncertain year for retail that there's a lot of, economic challenges that people are going to be really focused on profitability and a lot of the Retailer's talked about how, um their budgets are getting reduced significantly that the focus is really going to be deploying that Capital against things that can have a short term. Benefit to their cost structure and help them get their profitability up and so I kind of interpret that as. We're going to see a lot more a lot fewer investments in customer acquisition and front end systems and a lot more investment in back-end systems and optimizations. Scot: [11:23] Pickle I got a million questions on Automation in you know kind of the state of Art and my mind is still the key the system is there something out there you think at least on the you kind of mentioned in store but I'm thinking more Warehouse side anything there that's kind of. Jason: [11:41] Yeah so there's two big vendor like so Kiva is Amazon's proprietary system and to my knowledge they don't sell it to others yet do they. Scot: [11:49] No but it's still kind of the state of Missouri. Jason: [11:52] Yeah yeah they certainly could have some point so so you know there's kind of two philosophies of these like big fulfillment center automation. [12:02] Go go get bring the goods to a picker or you know you know so you actually move Isles which is what the key this system does it moves bins, um to a human picker that then pulls them out so the picture gets to stand still or these fully automated systems that like you don't bring things in on conveyor belts and so there's two big vendors, um there's a store a vendor called Auto store which is like a, very dense set of bins that are stacked quite high and they're shuttled around on conveyor belts so it's a 3D delivery system of these these bins, and there's a bunch of big retailers if you've highly automated your your fulfillment center in the u.s. like you're probably using Auto store or their competitor perfect, and so both of those had full live demos at the show that where you know are super mesmerizing to watch because they have all these. [13:01] These bins flying around but then went there were was a lot of startups that were more Kevo like, so instead of like a conveyor belt that ends with your exact products you know in a bin ready to package, um these are things that are like lifting shelves and moving the Shelf to a to a picker so even in that Innovation Center there were several Israeli companies that you know we're in a tiny little 10 by 10 booth, with the little robot that could you know lift up a gondola full of products and bring and move it around a warehouse. Scot: [13:34] Merkel and then from afar I saw Shopify really hitting the we're headless to kind of train which I thought was interesting because they kind of have, you just kind of dip their toe in that water I read it as they must be hitting some headwinds maybe at Shopify plus maybe some churn and realize they had to go into that market pretty hard so I wonder if our friends at Fabric and some of these other places were starting to take some share from. Jason: [14:02] Yeah so I don't know if it's as explicit as taking share I think there's this notion new companies are highly likely to start life on Shopify and it's a. If a family member calls me and says I want to start a business and sell something online I'm sending him to Shopify it's the easiest safest best best way to do it, so there's a notion that those companies ought to grow up and you know either by something else or spend a lot more money with Shopify, and so I think a lot of people looked at Shopify plus and they said oh yeah that's that's for the startup companies to evolve into, and then I think a lot of people are looking at the these Shopify Commerce components in that same way I actually suspect that's not the case, the overwhelming majority of startups that start on Shopify are are going to go out of business, right I just the attrition rate is super high and so most companies aren't getting bigger and need a bigger platform, um the I think what they're trying to do by having a mid-tier kind of mid-market offering is not so much help their existing customer base to grow its to acquire, um a new customer base that you know frankly has a little more proven business model and a little more stability to kind of help them with their Journey a little bit right and so, um I think that was the intent but far behind Shopify Plus. [15:23] Shopify plus never got a ton of traction and they actually had a pretty big staff reduction in Shopify plus earlier last year so. E-commerce components does feel like a restart like they're tackling I think the right problem this time like before they were tackling, the Professional Services that they thought you know an Enterprise client would want in order to use Shopify this time they're there they're tackling the. The functionality and the flexibility that a mid-market or Enterprise client might want so I think this is going to be, an interesting play but I don't think it's so much that Bigcommerce or Fabric or Commerce tools, um stoled customers from Shopify I think it's more Shopify want some of those customers in its ecosystem as well and obviously they have a lot of resources to go after them so that's kind of how. How I interpreted it. Scot: [16:20] We will agree to disagree on the a. Jason: [16:26] As we're about to find out from the predictions I am occasionally wrong. Scot: [16:29] Yeah we all are this is the The Humbling part of this program is trying to make predictions and this current world we live in AI everything was one of the things you have to have a DOT AI anything that blew your mind, you and I had chatted about you know we're starting to see a eyes for example that'll create product detail Pages where you anything getting some traction or is it all just. Jason: [16:54] Yeah so so I so a I think there's a trend that's super annoying to me I'm old and curmudgeonly is everyone knows but like, there are a bunch of companies that are decided to AI is cool and then they're just desperately looking for a problem to solve with AI and so and sometimes they don't understand the space very well or the problems or the economics of the problem very well and so there are a bunch of, AI companies, the I don't find particularly interesting right like there's probably 30 AI companies that are like we're personalization engine to do better product recommendations with a i. [17:29] And personalized product recommendations is super important there are, 15 Enterprise products that have been using AI for 15 years and are the is the AI getting much better. [17:43] Yes but. Like the you're not necessarily like bringing anything new to the party when you're you know a small start-up in that space, um so there are you know some things I don't get super excited about. The AI for inventory management is super interesting like these models that are doing demand forecasting that are doing kind of. You know most retailers kind of have a pretty simplistic model for for inventory balancing like you know what what inventory do I put in what fulfillment center how much extra inventory do put in a store for store fulfillment, things like that and now they're using AI to make that much more robust, um AI promotion engines so you know instead of kind of a one-size-fits-all promotion where hey we're going to do 30% off this product across the whole country, um we're going to you know throw some business rules to an AI engine that's going to decide like when and where to offer a promotion and it's going to, factor in a lot more localized factors and personalization factors and so you know there might be deeper discounts and, in some stores and other some circumstances and others are even in someday Parts than others so so I think all of. AI to improve these existing business processes is super interesting and then the the new use cases. [19:12] I'm very convinced that the majority of e-commerce content the majority of product descriptions we read attributes we read are going to be written by AI in the future like it's gotten really good there's a bunch of benefits to having it read it. I'm about in the old days Channel advisor at a bunch of clients they created product content for and then they syndicated that content to a bunch of different retailers and one problem was that content was the same at all those retailers so from an SEO standpoint it didn't look very unique, and one of the things that a I can do trivially is take your master product content and make 10 variants that are. [19:48] Equally human readable but are unique so that you could Syndicate different content to eBay Amazon and Walmart for example which is. Pretty cool and as we talked with mad about last week, you know Goodwill finds is using AI to onboard all their new skews pretty efficiently so I think it's really good for that and then the last thing I'll say is there's a lot of super interesting stuff around computer vision so both, pulling product attributes out of pictures, um using the security cameras in the store to to do inventory checks and to do merchandise and compliance checks and pricing checks, um and stuff like that and using that that inventory to understand customer using those security cameras to understand customer Behavior better even using computer vision to do better loss prevention which loss prevention, is a really big issue with this show and there's an explosion in organized crime this year and so that you know kind of, predicting crime events is kind of an interesting thing the days a eyes doing so like plugging a i into a camera is yielding I think a lot of pretty interesting use cases for retailgeek. Scot: [20:57] Yeah very cool did you get to see some of our favorite folks. Jason: [21:04] I did I did I saw a lot of past guests I think I made a joke on Twitter which we're going to have to do a separate show about how sad I am about everything that's happening on Twitter, but the. The most common thing that happens to me now is I have a loud obnoxious voice that everyone at this trade show can recognize yrg from this podcast and so everyone is super excited and I get tons of compliments I feel bad that you weren't there because it's kind of, it feels nice to have all these people recognized us and talk about how we're you know an important part of their, there we can help them in their job so I really appreciate that and I want to say hi to everyone I, I did cross paths with at NRF it was awesome to meet you and thanks for for stopping and saying hello but then the next word out of their mouth is where is Scott because I'm way more interested in meeting Scott than I was in meeting you. And I have to say that you're you're too much of a big deal the coming in or out. Scot: [22:04] No just I'm allergic to the cold and had a little bit of work to do on my side the auto industry's on a different cycle than the retail industry sadly. Jason: [22:15] Yeah but they are they are colliding have you like Auto Commerce is going to be a big thing. Scot: [22:19] Yes yes was almost all Automotive companies which is kind of out of never did not have that on my bingo card. Jason: [22:27] Yeah they're going to have to rename it AES or something Auto Electronics Show. [22:43] Yeah as everyone knows my pandemic hobby is trenching US Department of Commerce retail data in Tableau and kind of annoying that in our F ended on Tuesday night, so try to get up Wednesday morning and fly home but I had to wait to leave my hotel room because the 8:30 in the morning Eastern Time on Wednesday the US Department of Commerce published, their monthly retail sales data and this month is particularly exciting to me because it's the December data so that lets us do two things. Look at November and December together and kind of understand what happened in holiday and then it also obviously lets us Wicked January through December and start talking about, 20:22 as a whole year which lets me retire all my 2021 talking points so so that was exciting. Scot: [23:36] Recap of what what did we learn. Jason: [23:37] Yeah so that's about a four-hour show but I'm gonna recap the two top lines in under 30 seconds so we'll start with a holiday so if you add November and December sales which I would argue the best view of holiday is November December January, generate data is not available in a lot of people think of holidays November and December so if we just talked about November and December, and I'm going to take a narrow definition of retail for purposes of holiday I'm going to pull cars out, I'm going to pull restaurants out and I'm going to put gas stations out because it's a super volatile thing that's not very tied to Holiday behaviors so November and December sales were up, 5.2% versus last year so from 2021 which was a monster year we went up another 5.2%, now most people were disappointed when they saw that number, big for a couple reasons last year we were up 13.4 percent using the same definition of retail so. [24:38] You know a much lower rate of growth in last year and most people you know are having to comp against last year and they set their financial goals based on last year, and also in the middle of holiday like especially around Black Friday a lot of, third-party analyst publish a prediction they say we have Secret inside data we have credit card data and we think retail sales are going to be 9% or 12% or you know there were all these estimates, there were optimistic, all the digital guys came out and said digital sales are up significantly from the previous year and the inner F came out with these vague statements and said like more people are going to be shopping on Black Friday than ever before so you heard all this good news around Black Friday which made you think. [25:20] This is going to be a big holiday season and then and so you 5.2 sounds like a huge disappointment compared to some of that over exuberant, but to put that in perspective. [25:34] The historical average growth is four point four percent so 5.2% is meaningfully above the historical average, and I don't want to say I told you so but all of you that attended my webinars about holiday performance, I heard that that I was predicting in that five to five and a half percent even even back then so so there's a rare occasion of me getting it right. Here's the piece of bad news about that whole thing that 5.2% was all inflation so if if you adjust those two months for inflation we were actually down 1.8% from last, so the big takeaway from holiday is. [26:12] It was disappointing it was much more difficult to make a profit on this holiday than it has the last several Prophets, so a lot of retailers came in a holiday with pretty robust inventory levels they didn't sell through their inventory what they sold they didn't sell it particular High margins, um and so that's setting us up for a uneasy first half of 2023, retailers have too much inventory and and not enough recent profit so we're likely going to see a lot of discounting and you know more pressure on on income as they kind of work through all that in. [26:47] So that's the holiday Debbie Downer the full year is I think a better story the full year we sold seven point one trillion dollars worth of stuff which that's the first time we passed the seven trillion dollar mark, that's up 8.2 percent from last year again last year was a monster year, the best year in my my career of retail so, being up 8.2% versus that you know again is a really good story it's a bad news is you pull inflation out of that and we were basically flat we were up 0.2. Um so through that lens 2022 was not a fabulous year but the one thing I would say is, what's really interesting is where is retail compared to before the pandemic and cumulatively, retails up 31% from 2019 so so the full year of 2022 is 31 percent higher than 20, um an average year over the last 20 years in retail for a full year would be up 4.7% so. 31% is still almost twice what we would expect over a three-year kakkar so you know not a, knock it out of the park year but still you know very healthy industry on the backside of this pandemic. Scot: [28:09] So if we kind of you know there's that famous chart you hate and then we reverted to the mean does this mean we're kind of back on the meat. Jason: [28:19] Because it's wrong and I get to make fun of it. Scot: [28:21] Do you love to hate how about that are you hate to love I don't know and the so we reverted kind of back to the mean do you think that this kind of resets and we get back to that kind of traditional growth. Jason: [28:35] I still think there's some factors yet to play out so I'm not sure we're going to get completely back to normal for 2023 I think we're going to, we are still seeing some residual pandemic effects and the main residual pandemic effect we're seeing is. The spending is still skewing to experiences more than Goods so there was pent up demand for experiences, so we're you know we're we're possible we're seeing people invest more in experiences and less than Goods, but we're also starting to see a lot more economic uncertainty especially in the bottom two quartiles and so you know you're starting to see even kind of lower middle class people, change their purchase Behavior you know you're hearing in Macy's earnings that they're saying their consumers start starting to make some, you know economic trades in their purchase behaviors and so a lot of that's going to be. Kind of cooked into this 2023 so I don't think we're quite back to kind of perfectly the mean but I do think the, the ratio of store sales to e-commerce is likely to look a lot more normal this year than it has the last couple of years. Scot: [29:47] Pretty cool and this is the one that doesn't really give us e-commerce data. Jason: [29:51] Yeah there's some loose e-commerce data in there which is why I didn't quote it but next month they will publish the queue for e-commerce data so that will give us. A full year of e-commerce, you know we're starting to use these T numbers instead of B numbers in e-commerce. Scot: [30:21] Got it cool we'll have to do a big show on that one and you can just have a two hours a day spewing data. Jason: [30:28] Why I can describe my charts it's soup there's no more fascinating podcast than listening to a dude drone on about a chart. Scot: [30:34] Yeah that he can't see alright world will put a put a pin in that one and come back to it, on the all right so let's talk about predictions so I had to go back and one of our many interns research this it was back on episode 284 where we did our predictions and as is our custom we like to rate and review the prior Year's predictions and then lay down a stake for the next year so if we go I guess you'll kick it off so you'll go through my predictions and I'll say how I did and you'll kind of chimed in and then we'll flip. Jason: [31:10] Awesome and are we going to do off of yours and then all five of mine is that the easiest way to do okay. So we'll start with your first prediction Amazon is going to start getting serious about a Shopify competitor in potentially double down on headless. Scot: [31:27] Yet this was a Miss as far as I know you know what I didn't see coming was Amazon has had a bit of a rough year in and especially the back half of 22 you know they've done some layoffs they've, shuddered a lot of their physical stores they stopped their plans for big grocery expansion. I'll get that get that out on the record here early and yeah they've even started shedding warehouses so I think you know what what's happened is in this post there's been some really fascinating articles where, turns out they had this automated inventory system and its name is Scott ironically with one t and it. They trusted this thing so wholesale lie that it just went kind of Rogue and did not see the downturn you know this. Track attacking back to the mean and it kind of went Bonkers and so it's a little bit of an interesting case study of AI gone wrong and that has them having their hands very busy with their Core Business and they have not had a chance to punch Shopify in the nose and in some ways they may not have to because Shopify also had a lot of wind come out of it sales. Jason: [32:41] Yeah yeah I agree and I'm inclined to give you a note that too but if I were making an argument that you got it partially right the argument would be that they rolled out a really interesting feature called by with. And we talked about on the show we had a beta tester on the show that was super bullish on it and it's kind of a trojan horse that creates them interesting. Problems for Shopify that like frankly I'm still not sure shopify's figured out what they're going to do about but that went from a pilot program to full deployment. The week before in our F and it was a major feature of Amazon's booth and it's weird they branded the booth AWS but like. The booth was talking more about by with prime than it was a WS and and you know they're not they're not in the same divisions Within. [33:31] Um so you could argue by with prime is partly a Shopify competitor, but in the interest of me staying competitive in the predictions I'm not gonna not giving it to you and I will say, of your Amazon commentary is certainly true, but be a little careful like you know people tend to look at some of that and go oh man Amazon's really flailing like they're really feeling you know it's a huge thing for them to cut back on their fulfillment capacity and you know cancel some leases and just remember, they bought more fulfillment capacity than anyone else in the world has in a single year. The year before so it's it's not like they're getting out of retail. Scot: [34:15] You're spoiling one of my. Jason: [34:16] Find that people over over read into the you know that accurate – news but they think it's it's a more material part of Amazon's business than it is. Scot: [34:27] Yeah I integrated that into one of my future predictions. Jason: [34:31] All right so so we're going over one I like it so far I'm winning that your second prediction is Amazon puts a hurting on go puff and others go puff gorilla and Joker. Don't get out of 2022. Scot: [34:48] Yeah I'm going to score this one a win I don't I think somebody's out our business and I think go Puffs on its last legs if it's did it do a Down Round and layoffs and I don't. I certainly haven't even used it I don't know if it's I'm sure it's still around but I feel like it is on its last legs and I'm increasingly here in North Carolina like in Chicago you've had this for a while I'm increasingly getting offers that say Hey if you if you throw a little bit more in the cart you can get this thing overnight which has been kind of you know I feel like Amazon is really starting to shorten that delivery window in this post covid world. Jason: [35:26] Yeah so I'll give you a yes for that I do think a lot of the instant delivery companies like pulled out of markets or flat went out of business or left the US in 2020 so I think that's fair. I'm not sure go puff is publicly position themselves as quite as dire, as you did I could be wrong but they you know they're the biggest player left standing and and I think they have some some positive and negative indicators. The one thing I would quibble with is it's not clear to me if they are if all this instant Commerce not working is because Amazon put a hurt on them or whether, it just wasn't a good business model than enough customers were willing to pay for. Anyway right so I'm not sure if Amazon was the direct cause of all that pain or not but I do secretly think, Amazon has much better service levels than a lot of people realize you live in a wonderful place but it's. It's probably not a tier-one market for Amazon I talk to a lot of people in cities that The the vast majority of their orders are delivered same day and certainly the vast majority of stuff I ordered from Amazon, I get that order in by noon and it's it my doorstep before 10:00 that night and so that still is different than this instant delivery but. [36:49] I think Amazon's service level is darn impressive and I think you know that certainly you didn't want to be an investor in instant delivery in 2022. So I'll give you a yes. Scot: [37:01] Yes Pooh okay. Jason: [37:06] So your third one is metaverse lots of demo videos no Revenue. Scot: [37:13] Yeah think I nailed this one the Facebook has had a lot of Pi interface for spending an inordinate billions and billions of dollars on the Oculus the sales have dramatically underperformed even you know even moderate to light expectations there's no real use case that's popped out of here and then just generally and then certainly if we look at our e-commerce world there's really not much going on here so this one's been kind of a dud I'm a little bummed because I love AR and VR I just don't think we've kind of come up with the use case I think the wild card on this technology is there's increasingly detailed rumors of Apple having a device and if anyone can figure this out I think applicant but until they do, I think we're not going to see a lot of metaverse updates. Jason: [38:01] Yeah yeah I think this is a category that to me like if people are familiar with the Gartner hype cycle it fits it perfectly like. There definitely is a chance that there will be a version of The Meta verse that's very meaningful at some point but right now it's wildly overhyped. One could quibble with your in precise language like you say no revenue and of course there are some, some novel examples where there's a little bit of Revenue and the one that has meaningful revenue is for the kids is real box where you know it's. Game Revenue it gets its you know ingame credit it's not like you know people are shopping for real world of goods in the environment so there's a few things but I certainly think the spirit of your things exactly right that it's, it's wildly over-hyped and not. A financial driver in the in the near future and I would even argue nobody can even agree on a definition of what the metaverse is a it sounds singular to fight this pack that it's it's quite poor rural. You know a lot of people think the metaverse has to be on web 3 which means it's open and, Roblox is the example most people use the meta verse which is not on web three and you know a lot everybody thinks of the metaverse is VR and a lot of definitions of metaverse so Ike. Do not require VR so I don't know I'm cynical in the short term for sure so I'll give you a yes. Scot: [39:27] Okay. Jason: [39:29] For live streaming goes mainstream in 2022. Scot: [39:36] Yeah, here I was hoping to kind of weasel out with the mainstream so I will point to some successes so what not is a very collectible oriented Marketplace that is all live stream and I think they're gnd is north of a billion it may be closing in on two or three so that's pretty mainstream and then I've read probably 20 articles in the last 10 days about Tick Tock e-commerce and every time I dig into it there's no data it sounds like it's just new so I was hoping to take credit for that in some way but don't think I can so I'm going to probably score myself a no on this one. Jason: [40:18] Yeah so tricky like I think there's some use cases where a live streaming has become a thing and collectibles, is certainly one and it does I guess toy depend on what you meant by mainstream here's the thing the most generous definition of social commerce all social commerce in the US last year was about. 60 billion in total sales and live streaming was likely less than 1% of that 60 billion so I. [40:48] Social commerce isn't that big a piece of Commerce and live streaming is in a very big piece of social commerce so I through that lens, I feel like it's not a big thing and fun fact none of the Commerce on Tick Tock is wives. It's so people do I think confused short form video with live streaming, um and so I tend to think live streaming is overhyped in the US it does work in China but what people don't understand is, that live streaming in China is, flash deal-sales like all of them come with a significant price offer and the reason that you you want to watch that stream when it's alive is because, that offer has scarcity attached to it and that offer is not going to be available two hours after the video plays so you have to watch it while it's being broadcast in order to get that deal, um and you know none of the u.s. versions have really been that that deal oriented and without that deal why have live streaming when you could just record a short form video and, you know 100 times more people watch it over the subsequent two weeks or three weeks or whatever so so for all those reasons, I feel like live streaming has been a little overhyped in the US and I agree with you why I probably didn't go mainstream this year. Scot: [42:09] Yeah I don't know Tick Tock could be live stream it's kind of there's a stream. Jason: [42:16] But it's yep are you watching it when the person talks I mean that's what it boils down to or is it recorded on a server and you watched it days later. Scot: [42:23] I don't Tick Tock I don't want I don't want my get brainwashed. Jason: [42:26] Yeah spoiler alert it's not last. Scot: [42:29] Okay. Jason: [42:33] There is a live flavor on Tik-Tok but it's been quite small. Scot: [42:37] Yeah I'm two for two so I'm Batman 50. Jason: [42:40] So you're to noes to yeses and then your final prediction, is that fabric which is a an e-commerce platform / Marketplace and and the CEO Fazal has been on a show a couple times and you were predicting that they would. What says fabric acquisition so that could mean either that they made a big acquisition or they got acquired. Scot: [43:04] Yeah it was being acquired. Jason: [43:07] Yeah that's what I said. Yes and I met him at the show and I can confirm that he's still at fabric. Scot: [43:14] How are they doing. Jason: [43:15] Really well well I think they feel like, there are well positioned and benefiting from some of these headless trends that we talked about and we had a good chat Faso as a longtime veteran of the industry and ran e-commerce at Staples and and some other places so he's always fun to talk to. Scot: [43:33] Here's a head-scratcher so facile likes to be called Faisal and then we have a guy at 50 that wants to be Fazal so so and you know you know how it is like I know it's I cannot get it right because I always it's 50/50 coin toss but it always lands the wrong way so it's. Jason: [43:52] Yes I'm familiar with those dilemmas I also really struggle with fabric because his company is called Fabric and then there's another company called fabric that make micro fulfillment centers for grocery e-commerce. If you like you can have two companies with the same name in roughly the same space. Scot: [44:08] I give him. Entrepreneur credit because he raised a boatload of money when valuations were super high which was smart if it's enough to get through to the from the peak through the valley to the next week so we'll see how it goes for. Jason: [44:25] I'm knocking on wood you just can't hear it because I'm such a good audio editor. [44:39] It's kind of your historical average right now I don't know I'm. Scot: [44:42] Usually do better than half yeah it. Jason: [44:43] You've done better actually I think that's a down year for you I think it's up here for me and a down here for you. Scot: [44:48] Post covid it's hard to predict what the what's going on in the world. Jason: [44:53] And and as we have learned doing five years of these as hard as it is to predict something happens it's also timing is so tricky like very often we predicted something just in the wrong year. Scot: [45:04] Yeah I gave up on Amazon competes with the other shippers and that one still I still think it's coming. Jason: [45:10] Hundred percent there's a weird cognitive bias where like after you've been wrong once or twice you hate to predict it again even though it probably would be smart the. Scot: [45:18] Yeah yep. Jason: [45:20] I'm with you all right well let's see if I can hang with you at all. Scot: [45:21] Alright let's see how you did yeah so your first prediction was you love web 3 you're going to mortgage your house put all your money in FTS and this token that you were super excited about that was going to the mood called FTX how'd that work out for you. Jason: [45:40] It worked out better for Michael investor Tom Brady than it did for me. Scot: [45:44] Well I don't know he's in pretty rough rough time right now. Jason: [45:49] Neither of us are having our best years. Scot: [45:50] Butts. Jason: [45:53] I'll be different reasons but I feel like you might have slightly misstated the spirit of my prediction. Scot: [45:59] Oh yeah I misread this so it says in FTS web 3 meta 15-minute delivery will be Duds less and ft dollar transactions will happen in 21 verses 22. Jason: [46:12] Yeah so I was down I didn't think any of those things would be a big deal this year I guess one of those kind of overlap with you because you also didn't think instant delivery would be a big deal. And I don't think any of them were a big deal we've covered them pretty exhausted lie but in order to make this a fair prediction I tried to put something that was more measurable and so I said in Ft transactions will be down in 2022 from 2021 and. I got to be honest I looked it up before the show and so the good news is I'm right. In Ft transactions gmv for an ftes and in the u.s. in 2021 was 25 billion 25 Point 1 billion and this year it was twenty four point seven billion so just barely down and I have to be honest, I feel like I dodged a bullet because. The way you buy an mft is with a cryptocurrency and the two main cryptocurrencies are each less than half their value. From the beginning of the year and so you would think like, in Ft transaction should be way down just because the value of the underlying currencies is way down but you know apparently like despite the fact that it's not a mainstream thing it grew enough that I was I almost ended up being. Wrong on my on my number but that's a long-winded way of saying I feel like that's a yes. Scot: [47:32] Got it cool so we'll give you a yes prediction to here in North Carolina we call it Sheen you fancy City people call it she in your prediction was that they would do over 30 billion more than double the previous year so since we're a year off so you predicted in 2022 they would double a guest from 2020 1.15 billion you check this close and I do so I'm gonna have you self-regulate this one. Jason: [48:00] Yes I nailed it like almost to the penny except that you know they're not a public company so we don't we don't really know the revenue but that estimates for for 20 21 where 15 billion so I predicted 30 billion in 2022 they did a raise in March or may of May of 2022 and they disclosed during that raised that halfway less than halfway through the year they were already at 16 billion in Revenue, year to date, so I was tracking really well and they're doing another raised right now as we speak and their side note taking a ginormous haircut on that race so the, the May raise was that a hundred billion dollar valuation the razor trying to do right now is it 64 billion, um but they disclosed in the in the deal docks for this raise that they finished the year at 30 billion which is, means that their sales significantly decelerated in the second half of the year but it means my prediction was exactly right. Scot: [49:04] Very good congrats on that one. Jason: [49:06] Yeah and we could be out of time and not do the other other predictions if you want. Scot: [49:10] Well there's one country showing let's jump into this one so your third prediction was buy now pay later which we call B and P L is going to lose momentum it had 29 percent growth and 21 and you said it would slow to sub 15 and 22. Jason: [49:28] Yeah and so it depends on exactly what math you're using but the actual growth rate in 2022 is 48.6% so is that is that more or less than 15. Scot: [49:39] I find that hard to believe. Jason: [49:41] I do too I was surprised. Scot: [49:44] Yeah no I think I'm gonna give you this one because you know the stocks on all these are down clar NE is on life support and I don't know I feel like these guys the the largest, kind of tie up was Peloton and buy now pay later and you know Peloton is had a really rough go of that in 22 and took all you know down the biggest buy now pay later operator with a firm so I feel like he just was a yes. Jason: [50:17] Okay well I'm not gonna argue with you I feel like they got a lot of, negative momentum for a variety of reasons in in 2022 and right now we're seeing their valuations go way down because their default rates are starting to go up and what I'm noticing is, they're all trying to Pivot out of buy now pay later into other, other retail services but like depending on how much of a stickler you might be like they still apparently sold a lot of stuff on buy now pay later last. I'll take the yes or at least I'll take a half a yes. Scot: [50:48] I'll give you the win but I'll scold you for bad predicting like never get specific with percentages. Jason: [50:53] I know I know well I was I feel like so many people make these like lame predictions that I was trying to be super specific but I agree that was that was dumb alright thanks man you should great all my stuff. Scot: [51:02] Now this next one is kind of a Whopper so this is this is kind of my favorite so you predicted Amazon would open 100 grocery stores how's that one going. Jason: [51:15] It's great they opened one store and that store opened 365 times. But if you're doing store count. I missed it pretty substantially that I think they have 44 stores in the US and 17 stores in the UK so well short of 100, the end and I'm way less optimistic that they're going to invest in that that concept, now than I was a year ago when I made this prediction so that's definitely a no the only fun fact is compared to any other retail Concept in Amazon this one did pretty well because they literally closed every other one, and they're they're laying off a ton of the retail people like right now as we speak unfortunately so. So I think that's a clear no it does not seem like the immediate future for Amazon is in brick and mortar. Scot: [52:07] Yeah yeah they've really pulled in the horns on that one. Jason: [52:11] Fun fact then this means nothing no one should interpret this but Amazon close their bookstores in 2022 and Barnes and Noble was opening new book store some joint too so I think there was a time when we would have said that could never happen. Scot: [52:25] Yeah one of these is not going to be going well okay your last prediction was that last you there would be a last mile delivery acquisition of some kind you mentioned instacart v0x delivery and ship iam. Jason: [52:41] Yeah and none of them were acquiring so I think, I miss this I mean if you go deep cut enough I found there's a couple like four million dollar transactions that happen but none of the name ones did anything there they did some fundraising the the premise behind this, this prediction last year was, that one of the ways that a lot of e-commerce sites deliver packages is not exclusively through FedEx UPS in u.s. post office, that increasingly they're using a Federation of a bunch of small last-mile companies and that often there's a middle man that's helping aggregate all those small a smile companies that make it easier to ship with them, and so my thought was that's becoming a more important. [53:27] Part of the e-commerce echo system that somebody's going to try to make a big play there and kind of roll some of them up or acquire some of them and and you know kind of add them together and make something more valuable, um and it didn't happen last year and what's interesting is, Fedex rates and UPS rates are going way up this year like one of the conversations I had with a lot of e-commerce sites, last year was that their last mile costs are going up at an untenable rate so this. This methodology is becoming more important and more popular so this is a classic example, if I were smart I should probably take this this prediction and double down again on it for this year but spoiler alert I did not do that I just took the no and I moved on. Scot: [54:12] All right so out of your five you had sixty percent so you had three correct and to wrong so you you win the year so congratulations you get the virtual trophy you get an mft, ironically you get the nft the Jason Scott exclusive one of one in Ft. Jason: [54:38] I'm super excited about that for all our listeners I only accept in ft's that are minted on proof of stake blockchains I don't accept proof-of-work blockchains because they're an ecologically. Scot: [54:51] So it's Solana for you all right I know we're Up Against Time the shows always go a little long so I'm going to kind of lightning round my predictions for 2023. [55:15] All right so number one Amazon uses the this 2022, perceived setback that I think's way overblown you kind of mentioned it at the top and, I think what's going to happen is sure e-commerce is going to revert to the mean but under the hood I feel like they're going to be taking share at a really aggressive clip, the reason to borrow on shipping the selection of things that are near you is going up, I have through my day job I can see that they are making a lot of good changes with last mile delivery they're still putting a lot of effort into that and improving it and making it better all the time so so basically I think they're going to you know if I have to, get a little more specific I think they're going to take a fair amount of share in 2023 from the rest of e-commerce so they already are like more than half of e-commerce and I think they grab a chunk so that's kind of how I would measure this is what percentage of e-commerce Amazon has and I think they're going to take, pretty good chunk. Jason: [56:19] I like it cool. Scot: [56:20] That's my first one number two is I think Shopify is going to be acquired you know so I think they're doing this headless thing the first party piece hurts them and a lot of you know Facebook so that's a natural Binding Together they're there we're going to talk about it in a future show but they're kind of they have never really executed on this idea of a Marketplace they've had a lot of weird cultural things where they talked about getting rid of meanings and then like their hole. Admin interface was down for days it feels like something's going on they've had a lot of people a lot of turnover they've gone totally virtual I'm not a fan of that I think it's hard to be super Innovative and have to whatever the world changes have to hop on a DSM calls to figure out what everyone's thinking so I think I think they're they definitely we've hit Peak Shopify probably you know in 2021 and this is when it starts to be time maybe some people say hey this wouldn't be a bad time to to tap out here, we'll see. Jason: [57:24] Wow that's awesome one just quick curiosity one problem is the valuation like while it's gone down a lot is still pretty high like so the pool of acquirers is pretty small or are you thinking the valuations going to keep going down low enough that there's. That more people might take a shot at it. Scot: [57:42] Yeah I think I think even at this valuation there's probably three or four acquirers and I think the valuation could go down further. Jason: [57:48] All right cool I like I love the big bold ones. Scot: [57:51] Yeah you're going to hate this next one so this one is where everyone thinks AI is hype I'm thinking there's going to be a big innovation we don't see it from these new AI engines specifically right now the state of the artist G PT 3, I know people have seen GPT for and they all can't express enough how game-changing it's going to be so I think there's going to be something in the e-commerce world not this is like so it has to be kind of a big idea so I can't be just like a chatbot or like another recommendation engine but I think there's gonna be something kind of, big here that's hard, it's so different that it could be hard to I can't tell what it's going to be but I think something big is going to happen here that kind of makes our heads explode so that's my prediction that we actually see a really, disruptive piece of technology kind of AI that impacts the e-commerce world. Jason: [58:47] Okay I like it I don't have a other than it's going to be higher so you hard to measure but I guess we'll know it when we see it. Scot: [58:56] Yeah. Yeah and then since we've got great each other gives you a lot of fodder to push against ich number for e-commerce is going to accelerate back so I think and the first half will have these recessionary wins I'm a eternal optimist you're typically on the pessimist I think we'll have a soft Landing maybe we don't have much of a recession and then in the back half will be kind of through this post covid Hayes hopefully I think part of this prediction in Furs that inflation will will kind of get under control and we'll see e-commerce go back to kind of its average growth rate which has been historically 15 percentage so that's my prediction there. Jason: [59:38] Okay yeah I think they're a bunch of people that are like kind of e-commerce growth is tapped out which is I think they're wildly wrong so I certainly take the bullish side of that one for you. Scot: [59:50] Yeah and then this one I have to give props to my daughter I was she was looking over my shoulder and I was doing these and she said I have one and I said you don't understand the stakes I've got to be Jason because I did bad this year and she said I don't care I'm 16 and I spend a lot of time at Sephora and Ulta this is her speaking not me I also do because I'm with her but now she can drive so I'm spending less time there and I think they're going to come out with some kind of a subscription model so, there you go I don't know any specifics but that is her hot take. Jason: [1:00:21] Okay and and by that you don't mean they're going to transition their whole business to a subscription you mean they're going to add some kind of subscription offering okay. Scot: [1:00:28] Yeah yeah and you know I was thinking you know what was that one there was a box that was Beauty used Beauty Box every over the name of that. Jason: [1:00:38] Yeah there. Scot: [1:00:39] I don't think I made it yeah and I said you mean like that. Jason: [1:00:43] Box is that what. Scot: [1:00:44] Birchbox well very good man yeah old school way to pull that one out and she said no it'll be more like I can go to the store and they'll I can I can pick up kind of like they'll pull stuff for me that comes in and I could just go to the store and it'll be already there for you. To understand. Jason: [1:01:05] Clarifying question because far be it for me like I want to learn to like and your daughter certainly have the future behavior that neither of us understand yet. Is she thinking like that in the same way that Birchbox was kind of a discovery thing she's thinking this is some kind of. Discovery thing of new products because I actually think Sephora already has a like you know if you use this amount of moisturizer will automatically send you a new thing a moisturizer every three months. Scot: [1:01:35] This was tied more to influence your site so I think there's these influencers and they each have kind of staked out you know there each store has a set of influencers and I think she's starting to see them come out with seasonal products kind of like a yeah and I think that it'll be a subscription to that kind of thing. Jason: [1:01:52] That makes total sense that would be new and I. Could seem cool a lot of the traditional subscriptions lately have not done as well as some of us might have expected but so yeah this this will be interesting kind of like the next gen of those Discovery boxes. Scot: [1:02:09] One thing I did notice in my last six I think this is for they have a end cap that says inspired by Tick-Tock and it's always empty. And as estimate I was like are they she's like oh every time they put something there so I was up and I was like wow that's pretty amazing. Jason: [1:02:28] The Tik Tok made me buy it in cap. [1:02:38] I'm 100% with you social commerce is a thing and it's mostly not about people ordering stuff on Tick Tock it's about people discovering stuff on Tick Tock and then buying it from Sephora. Scot: [1:02:47] I know I was trying to get some partial credit. Jason: [1:02:51] Yeah I like it though all right I think those are great. Scot: [1:02:54] And then in the spirit of my third prediction which was a I will change the world I actually asked chatgpt to make a prediction and it said. Chatgpt: [1:03:04] Based on Trends and current developments in e-commerce it is likely that we will see continued growth and expansion in the industry with an emphasis on mobile Commerce. Personalized shopping experiences and increased use of Technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Additionally there may be an increased focus on issues such as sustainability and social responsibility in e-commerce. Scot: [1:03:30] And when it said that I was thought I thought you were punking me I thought you were on the other side of the chat because I was like that's exactly what someone at publicist would say. Someone with a really long title like eight words that's the exact kind of synergistic linguistic word salad that they would they would throw out. Jason: [1:03:52] Yeah there's nothing super tangible in there but it sounds really good That's a classic chatgpt answer. Scot: [1:03:58] So one way my my one prediction could come true as if you're replaced by an AI so I'll just I'm not that's not a prediction is just one way I could cheat my prediction. Jason: [1:04:08] So fun fact is some people know I have a Forbes column and my my most recent Forbes article was about the demise of e-commerce being overhyped. Often I read those articles from scratch myself sometimes I write an outline or a first draft and I send it to a pupusas copywriter and they send me back a first draft and then I edit it and. When I do that I have to do a lot of work because of the copywriters are really talented writers and use proper English and I'm really. Less sophisticated so to put it in my. In my voice I have to change it a lot so this most recent Forbes article I had chatgpt writer and I said write a Forbes article in the voice of Jason Goldberg that has this title and makes these Five Points. Um and so it didn't really do any research for me it didn't like pick any of the answers because I gave it all the answers in my prompt and the data I wanted to support it. It was kind of like I handed it my outline and had it right the first draft in my voice and it was way closer to exactly what I wanted then the ones I get from the copywriter so I probably will never write a first draft from scratch again. Scot: [1:05:25] Does that mean that copywriters going to lose their job. Jason: [1:05:28] No she's gonna move to higher value stuff from now the actual smart people to do some good with proper English. Scot: [1:05:36] Unrelated we going to have a new new podcast host. Jason: [1:05:42] The yeah that we're way over on time but like the the really scary one is these awesome avatars that can make, I can learn your voice and then sound perfectly like your voice are now out in the wild from several companies including Adobe and, and I conveniently have 3:00 of my own voice and your voice on wreck so I think I can make the two of us say anything we. Scot: [1:06:07] Yep I think again. Jason: [1:06:09] Awesome all right well those all seem like good predictions that seems like you have a very viable chance of coming back and getting your nft trophy back for me, I will whip through mine, I suffered greatly because we are recording this late I wrote my predictions of the beginning of the year and I said Party City and Bed Bath and Beyond are going to declare bankruptcy, and unfortunately pretty soon declared bankruptcy yesterday in Bed Bath and Beyond hasn't cleared yet but they've announced publicly that there, they're likely to so I can't really use that prediction but I'm going to say that there are going to be at least two other retail bankruptcies besides Party City in the in the space this year, um you know I think Bed Bath and Beyond is likely to declare bankruptcy but I also think we might see some of the kind of model-based apparel retailers or. There's a few other other retards I have my eye on so I do think we're
In this episode, Jay, Rohan, and Fazal recap the Mavs' comeback win against the Houston Rockets, in which they trailed by as many as 18 points en route to their seventh straight victory their longest winning streak since March 1, 2011, the championship season. This was the Mavs' third win against Houston in 10 days. They specifically discuss Luka's continued dominance and his increasing chemistry with Christian Wood, whose impact only continues to grow with each start. Wood had 21 points to go along with a career-high tying five blocks in the game, and he looks to be the player the Mavs had hoped they acquired last summer. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mavsfilmroom/message
In Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell UP, 2020), Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past one hundred fifty years. Fazal outlines three main arguments: early laws of war favored belligerents, but more recent additions have constrained them; this shift may be attributable to a growing divide between lawmakers and those who must comply with international humanitarian law; and lawmakers have been consistently inattentive to how rebel groups might receive these laws. By using the laws of war strategically, Fazal suggests, belligerents in both interstate and civil wars relate those laws to their big-picture goals. Why have states stopped issuing formal declarations of war? Why have states stopped concluding formal peace treaties? Why are civil wars especially likely to end in peace treaties today? In addressing such questions, Fazal provides a lively and intriguing account of the implications of the laws of war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell UP, 2020), Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past one hundred fifty years. Fazal outlines three main arguments: early laws of war favored belligerents, but more recent additions have constrained them; this shift may be attributable to a growing divide between lawmakers and those who must comply with international humanitarian law; and lawmakers have been consistently inattentive to how rebel groups might receive these laws. By using the laws of war strategically, Fazal suggests, belligerents in both interstate and civil wars relate those laws to their big-picture goals. Why have states stopped issuing formal declarations of war? Why have states stopped concluding formal peace treaties? Why are civil wars especially likely to end in peace treaties today? In addressing such questions, Fazal provides a lively and intriguing account of the implications of the laws of war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
In Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell UP, 2020), Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past one hundred fifty years. Fazal outlines three main arguments: early laws of war favored belligerents, but more recent additions have constrained them; this shift may be attributable to a growing divide between lawmakers and those who must comply with international humanitarian law; and lawmakers have been consistently inattentive to how rebel groups might receive these laws. By using the laws of war strategically, Fazal suggests, belligerents in both interstate and civil wars relate those laws to their big-picture goals. Why have states stopped issuing formal declarations of war? Why have states stopped concluding formal peace treaties? Why are civil wars especially likely to end in peace treaties today? In addressing such questions, Fazal provides a lively and intriguing account of the implications of the laws of war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
In Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell UP, 2020), Tanisha M. Fazal assesses the unintended consequences of the proliferation of the laws of war for the commencement, conduct, and conclusion of wars over the course of the past one hundred fifty years. Fazal outlines three main arguments: early laws of war favored belligerents, but more recent additions have constrained them; this shift may be attributable to a growing divide between lawmakers and those who must comply with international humanitarian law; and lawmakers have been consistently inattentive to how rebel groups might receive these laws. By using the laws of war strategically, Fazal suggests, belligerents in both interstate and civil wars relate those laws to their big-picture goals. Why have states stopped issuing formal declarations of war? Why have states stopped concluding formal peace treaties? Why are civil wars especially likely to end in peace treaties today? In addressing such questions, Fazal provides a lively and intriguing account of the implications of the laws of war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
EP290 - Shoptalk 2022 Recap ShopTalk held it's first in-person show since 2019, May 27-30th in Las Vegas. The show made the move from the Venetian to the Mandalay Bay. Nearly 10,000 attendees joined more than 600 exhibitors at this years show. Making ShopTalk one of the first industry events to truly feel like it did prior to the pandemic, and living up to the billing as the retail industries reunion. Shoptalk has truly established itself as the preeminent digital commerce event in the US. In this episode Jason and Scot recap all the major keynotes, trends, and themes from the show. If you wren't able to attend, this show will catch you up. If you did attend, they episode will help you write that event recap you owe the rest of your team! Episode 290 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday April 8, 2022. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 290 being recorded on Thursday April 7th 2022 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners well tonight we are excited to talk about shoptalk Jason you went for the show I was not able to make it this year unfortunately but you went and you are going to report on all the happenings and I'm excited to hear how it went. Jason: [0:57] I know I feel like listeners should know that your April Fool's joke is you told me you were there and I kept waiting like at the Starbucks to meet you and you never showed. Scot: [1:06] Not true not true I was a good co-host and I let you know with plenty of time I wouldn't be able to make it. Jason: [1:12] I am teasing but I do think shoptalk overlapped April Fool's this year. Scot: [1:17] It was her a lot of shenanigans. Jason: [1:19] There there was not any there was some usual trade show Shenanigans but I'm not sure I would say there was any April Fool's related Shenanigans but it was a good show you missed a good one. Scot: [1:31] Before we dive in what was the Starbuck situation. Jason: [1:33] So the Starbuck situation I would give it a B+ so it's a for people for a long time treat your followers shoptalk started out at the Aria as a small show and then it outgrew the Aria and they moved to the Venetian which it was nice because the Venetian does have on-prem Starbucks but the Venetian is a, kind of very big and they did it there for a number of years and then they right before the pandemic they announced they were moving it to Mandalay Bay and so this was the first one in Mandalay Bay and Mandalay Bay is good because it has. To Starbucks one in the casino area and one on the way to the convention center so so ordinarily I would give that a plus but they one of the Starbucks is still closed from the pandemic it hasn't reopened and the one on the way to the convention center normally takes mobile orders which is awesome, for the convention they turned up they turned off mobile orders every day of the convention. Scot: [2:41] I don't need it. Jason: [2:43] I stayed very well caffeinated and in my new world where I drink iced coffee from Starbucks branded iced coffee from the grocery store I got to augment my stops at the Starbucks by having a couple, jugs of Starbucks iced coffee in my room as well so no one should be worried about me. Scot: [3:01] That you can say in your backpack or strapped to your head like I have one of those beer hats. Jason: [3:06] Exactly and I showed up at a couple morning meetings with like to Starbucks and it's always this great debate like should I go hide in a closet somewhere and finish one so that the people in this meeting won't know that I was double-fisting it or should I just embrace my, my problem and I embraced it. Scot: [3:22] Everyone listens to the podcast Selena it's a well-known thing no one judges you for your Starbucks. [3:35] We live all coffee we're pretty agnostic on the coffee. We'll call what were the so that's the Starbucks what about the this whole thing called retail and e-commerce. Jason: [3:50] Yeah so before we jump into all the the topics and going ons it's a I would just say like I think there, I don't know what's the official or The Unofficial theme but they called the retails reunions and I feel like it was pretty apt this is the first big show, that to me felt like it did before the pandemic they had 10,000 attendees which. If it's off from from 2019 it's only slightly like maybe they had 12,000 attendees in 2019 so, 10 felt like a big show they had a 650 exhibitors. It felt pretty normal which was awesome and one of the best things about shoptalk normally is the networking and catching up with friends and I feel like that was in full effect and, extra fulfilling this year because you know I just got to see a bunch of people that I enjoy spending time with that I hadn't gone to Sea in a couple of years. Scot: [4:52] Prickle yeah so it's kind of a I like this post covid lifestyle where it just feels like nothing happened it uh it's a it's a joy. Jason: [5:00] Yeah yeah I feel like the biggest Debbie Downer for me is everyone I was excited to see was like mostly just asking me about you. Scot: [5:07] All right sir I'm through through Outlet cool what did any. Jason: [5:15] Throw out because maybe I'll throw a contrary position at the end but I would say the overall mood at the show was also interesting to me it felt very optimistic like people were upbeat people were. Kind of like enthusiastic about the year ahead and you know I don't know it was it was a good vibe. Scot: [5:36] Yes I was tracking a lot of the social media and it was interesting a long this so you had shoptalk which is like you know it was like one one track if you will and all the positive things there but at the same time and there was like some some chaos in e-commerce land where we had the single click checkout thing called Fast kind of falling apart we had, lot of the rapid delivery companies, go puff is not one of them but you know them better not be a gorilla and like three or four of them kind of imploded kind of right during shoptalk so there is kind of envisioned you guys like yeah this 15-minute deliveries the future while right outside the conference center it was kind of falling apart. Jason: [6:17] There was some version of that there was you know Uber instacart and doordash all talking about instant delivery well a lot of the, the tenuous VC funded ones were, we're announcing their their shutdowns and for sure they're there was I mentioned 650 exhibitors I think about 620 of them were payment providers. Or buy now pay later surfaces and what like if you walked around the show you'd think that was the biggest thing ever and and yeah / your point like you know one fast runner fast as a payment provider was kind of spinning down and laying everyone off while this while the show is going on so not a lot of talk about that at the show. Scot: [7:05] Yeah weird will call I'm excited to hear your take on things let's let's jump in. Jason: [7:10] Awesome so I kind of am dividing tonight's talk into two sections the main Keynotes and kind of what my highlights were from the Keynotes and then, some of the main trends that I sort of picked up on from the show so they will start with the key notes and all the big media companies you know had a keynote So So Meta was there not with maybe the most senior met a person like that like shoptalk tends to get big names for the Keynotes and The Meta was like a track keynote from Benjy Shalimar who's like the VP of Commerce which you know big roll it meta but it wasn't like they had Sheryl Sandberg or someone, they had Alan Siegen from Google who's like the president of America's Partnerships and they he talked about Google and YouTube, and you know from those platforms, meta was like super bullish on social commerce as you would expect but they were highlighting that like hey the biggest growth area at Facebook in the short term is Commerce, and he specifically called that stuff you talked about all the time that like there's a huge amount of untapped buying intent and Facebook groups, and Facebook Marketplace and then they're very bullish on the live streaming via reels in Instagram. Scot: [8:40] This guy's a genius. Jason: [8:41] Yeah so he was he was pitching that and you know he didn't. Again people don't tend to break news at this show but you got the impression that there was going to be some some new product launches in the in the near future that we're Commerce related you definitely don't get the impression that that, Netta is exclusively focusing on VR and moving away from Commerce, and then very similarly Google was like Hey Commerce is where it's at, you know they always have fun data to share that you know they always share some Trends about like, search and you know one of the interesting things is they were saying was that while there's a lot of evidence that people are returning to stores as the pandemic abates, that it's not at the expense of digital it's in addition to digital so they were. They now have a lot of geolocation data in the Google ecosystem and so they were talking about how like fifty-four percent of shoppers. [9:40] Have been to five different shopping channels in the last two days so in-store and online and they're they're super bullish on YouTube as a Commerce platform so they're they're both talking about, lot of new shoppable video formats and shoppable video ads and YouTube is a live streaming platform for influencers. In you know increasingly they have so many add products on Google that it can be hard to figure out where to put your money and what to invest in and so they have kind of one new, new ad product they seemed to be leaning into pretty heavily which is called performance Max and the idea is you just close your eyes and give Google its money your money and Google figures out the best places to put up for you. Scot: [10:26] It sounds a little suspicious I'm going to get Sr some machine learning in there that just going to magically spend my money for. Jason: [10:33] It's got like a bunch of real time optimization and and you know the obviously like you should be cynical about those things I'm a little dubious but I would say that a lot of these. Real-time allocation and bidding systems like you know they do tend to work pretty well like they do tend to outperform humans that are trying to make make you know decisions based on. Historically wrong stuff and opinions. Scot: [11:01] Yeah the we've been experimenting with some of the stuff that spiffy and you used to do narrow match and Broad match experiment and then as you as you do some of these under the hood as we watch what they're doing at least you have some visibility it's not like a black box you know it actually seems to be doing a pretty good job and it takes a lot of manual work out of what some of the best practices that you would do so so I like to poke fun but I do think there's definitely a there there. Jason: [11:28] Yeah ya know I tend tend to agree and prove your point like you can put all the parameters you want and so you can run a test and see how it works and kind of, increment into you know a bigger chunk of your budget, but then we had like one real retailer on the main stage which was Catholic a who's a CEO of Sam's and she was pretty interesting she was talking because you don't normally think of Club as being a super digitally engaged category and you know digital being super important to club like the, the most famous club retailer in the world is Costco who I would argue is why quite famously a digital Luddite, and Kathy was talking a lot about how important omnichannel was for Sam's and how like successful scan and go has been and that like. That that specific particularly with younger Shoppers with Millennials that there's that there's a preference to scan and go over you know traditional checkout and the scan and go customers, shop more frequently and spend more so they're they're the best customers and that Sam's Club is even running ads promoting, the scan and go functionality and that was interesting to me because. [12:51] Walmart has kind of tested and moved away from scan and go a couple times I feel like they're kind of leaning back into it at the moment, but it seems like it's and it's club like they're pretty convinced it's a no-brainer that it's a net positive so so just walk out. Type technology you know sort of more proof that customers appreciate. Scot: [13:14] Nursing J W for the win. Jason: [13:16] Exactly and then the Big 3 key notes as far as I was concerned that were most interesting where all the the. I'll call them local Commerce is what they want to be called now or we might traditionally called them rapid Commerce but so it's the. CEO of instacart Fiji Simo, the president of doordash Chris Payne and then the CEO of uber dhara and I can never pronounce his last name but but so that would, he begets as far as I was concerned and those are you know three interesting companies in our industry right now and. [13:57] You know at least two of them maybe all three of them you don't necessarily first think of as Commerce. Or if you do you think of them exclusively is kind of food Commerce and they all were kind of talking about their General Commerce Place so so it instacart, it's all about becoming the platform for local Commerce right and so exactly kind of like. [14:19] GSI pivoted from being a turnkey solution to being a platform that retailers used instacart is launching all these white label Standalone services so carrot ads and. Carrot fulfillment and they're opening their own rapid Commerce distribution centers that you can stage your products in and, and you know offer 15 minute or 30 minute delivery windows, so that you know it's kind of interesting instacart was really trying to sell their their stuff as services and and white labeled services and not just for food so across all of Commerce, the same with doordash doordash seemed to be talking about hey we're we're all general merchandise, were you know doubling down on using. Fulfilling orders from stores helping stores either use us as their own last mile service and even helping. [15:28] Create inventory locations for retailers that are closer to Consumers and Chris Payne talked a lot about, these delivery promises and it was interesting he was like. You know we can all do 15-minute delivery but there definitely is not a path to doing 15-minute profitably and there's a lot of operational challenges and he was kind of arguing, that he felt like 30 minutes was The Sweet Spot that that like he thought it was totally viable the offer, in a peeling assortment of items for 30-minute deliver and meat delivery in major Metro areas and that that was going to be the focus of doordash. And then Uber, same thing like you know right now ubereats makes as much or more than then Uber rides, and if you've been watching TV you may have seen they have a national ad campaign right now which is pretty funny called Uber not eats and it's you know promoting all the non edible stuff that you can get delivered from. From from Uber and and that like they wanted their kind of phrase for themselves was we want to be the local business operating system so all the stuff. That a business needs to do kind of local Last Mile does that get you all fired. Scot: [16:49] Chris Payne was that a it does Chris Payne was a team I know him from her. He always has he was at like MSN and then eBay he's been all over the place he said he's kind of a he started I think it was a CTO for a while but I think he's now more operational. Jason: [17:09] Yeah I mean he was good and you know it was interesting to hear from all of them I do think all of these like startups that are you know. You know I think there is a significant infrastructure disadvantage when when kind of uber doordash and instacart are all weaning into your space. Scot: [17:28] Yeah it's hard to hard to compete with them on one side and Amazon on the other it's a bit of a crunch. Jason: [17:36] Yeah and it kind of my big takeaway from the these these key notes in aggregate is, the swim lanes are off by each of these companies might have been born in a slightly different category of the gig economy of you will, and they you know they each had kind of their home market and they all have decided that the growth opportunity is to expand into each other's market so I think these three companies, feel increasingly like direct competitors to each other. Um so that was kind of my Keynotes and then and I did not get to attend every single key note it was a pretty busy show and I was over programmed, but so then I did attend as many other sessions as I could and here kind of the big themes from my perspective and you tell me of any of these resonate with you. [18:26] There are a lot of sessions about buy now pay later and like it was very optimistically covered, in these sessions and Mackenzie did a session where they were sharing some consumer research that you know more than sixty percent of consumers plan to use it I thought all the, the buzz around being PL was interesting because, in my world it almost feels like like that that trend has already peaked and is starting to decline. [19:00] So you know part of a lot of retailers adopted be in PL they originally World on their website now the ruling it out in point-of-sale and a little known fact, it's more expensive for most retailers than a traditional credit card transaction and the argument was, that it would bring incremental customers and higher value customers, um and like that hasn't been universally true amongst my clients that have tested it, and the kind of the world has changed a little since these Services first rolled out now these services are all showing up on credit reports which, for a while they weren't and so that was a reason a consumer might have chosen to use this versus traditional credit card was if you know, they already had a spotty Credit Report or didn't want to risk getting a spotty credit report and there's a lot of talk about like default rates starting to really creep up on these things so I kind of wonder. [19:57] How durable they're going to be in the long-term especially if you know the economy keeps being challenging for a little while. Scot: [20:05] Yeah and one of The Shining examples was Peloton which is kind of Hit the skids pretty hard and I think they were like half of a firm's volume or some some crazy number you know of one of the. Jason: [20:19] Meaning a lot of protons where bye. Scot: [20:21] That's got a great ahead. Jason: [20:22] Installment plan yeah okay. Scot: [20:25] Yeah like something like 80% of peloton's had an affirm plan and so but also I think it was by far our firms biggest Merchant. I've read you know like a very material percentage of a firm's, what do you guys call it transaction payment volume through those bmps I don't know whatever the metric is of the transaction volume flowing through I think I think Peloton was a big one and it's there in a world of hurt so I wonder if that's creating some pressure on the industry to. Jason: [20:50] Yeah at the very least I don't think the world needs as many as we have right now so I would expect at the very least that we're going to see some consolidation in that space and it, you know it certainly has a place in the ecosystem but there was a while when I was like oh my God the Magic Bullet to every Commerce problem is buy now pay later. Scot: [21:11] Yeah there is was there any good consumer Behavior though that you believed or was it all felt like the the buy now pay later guys had just funded it that consumers love it. Jason: [21:26] Yeah well yet I mean I don't think the Mackenzie research was funded by by a particular company but you know it was this stated preference survey from customers and you know how much I love. Stated preference service from from consumers. Scot: [21:41] Yeah. Jason: [21:44] Side note 99% of all alcoholic say they can stop drinking whenever they want if you want to do a survey. Scot: [21:53] Absolutely and everyone says they'll spend more money for something environmental friendly than they never do. Jason: [21:58] And a hundred percent of people are of above average intelligence. Scot: [22:03] Yes and handsome. Jason: [22:05] Which doesn't yet turn out to work out so. Another big talking point at the show was everybody's favorite word to hate is omni-channel like there were a ton of omni-channel sessions there's a lot of interesting talk about, people returning to stores like there is mixed messages about the rate of digital adoption declining and I would say. [22:34] The rate of acceleration is declining but like digital is not diesel is not shrinking in any like absolute basis. A lot more of these omnichannel amenities and so this was like that was a lot of the Sam's Club talk was about that Dave gilboa who's the one of the cofounders of Warby Parker he was talking a lot about Omni Channel and the role of the stores in their business model and how they've kind of gone back to Virtual try on like the I don't know people know that the original plan for Warby Parker was, that you could use your phone to try glasses on and. The technology wasn't quite there when they launched the company and people didn't like it very much so they end up having to do all these, tried for five pair for free as an emergency stop Gap but now they feel like with the lidar and the latest iPhones they feel like the virtual try and experience is working better than the, the tripe are model and so they're starting to see a lot of uptick in that but people still want to come into the store to buy the glasses so kind of talking about, Omni channel for the win. Scot: [23:45] That's not harmonized. Jason: [23:48] Yeah no only 44 what's his name Steve Dennis. Scot: [23:56] Dennis yeah. Jason: [23:57] Sorry I missed her bifurcation is how I think of them but. Data is always a buzzword at this show which again I like data as much as the next person but I'm not sure like as a tactic that it's a standalone thing but a lot of people wanted to provide case studies about how they were, you know leveraging data in new ways and particularly omni-channel data so John strain who's the chief digital officer Gap was talking about, all the new initiatives that Gap is doing for first-party data and he was arguing that like you know with the two doing personalization with first-party data like they were saying. [24:41] Did that, they were able to acquire customers that were like 40 percent more likely to be new file customers as opposed to Labs customers and it had a 30 percent higher order value than, then kind of their their pre data-driven customer acquisition tactics. The Steve Miller who's the head of digital at Dick's Sporting Goods he was talking about a lot of. Sort of the data collection techniques that they were using and how they were getting way you know better outcomes out of personalization they had a kind of cool example I like. Dick's Sporting Good launched an app called I think it's called Game Changer and what it is is it's an app for your phone to keep score at a baseball game and by keep score do you know what I mean like track all the stats. People for a long time have Branagh book and like. Scot: [25:37] Book yeah. Jason: [25:38] Manuel keep score the game so they created this app they give it away for free but what it does is it now like get wet them get 27 million. Like weekly Baseball fans like in their ecosystem that they then get to Market you know they have first-party data on and get to Market to so it's kind of like when. Um Under Armour bought MyFitnessPal for example like kind of interesting places where retailers are, are like building or buying these digital utilities that aren't necessarily directly related to Commerce so I just to get closer to customers that they can then Market. Scot: [26:21] Yeah that is color all Trojan Horse strategy. Jason: [26:24] Exactly and then Julie Bornstein who's the founder of the yes, I think a past guest on the show she was kind of talking about her first party data and she was throwing out red meat to all the Consultants that are selling personalization so here's going to be the money quote that you're going to see in every brochure you get for the next year, our first party day I driven first-party data experiences drove a 75% increase in annual spend a hundred percent annual order frequency and 125 percent better retention rate. So sounds great sounds like they got some improvement that move the needle for them I'm excited for them, here's going to be the thing when you see all these personalization vendors that are now pitching that to you like. Personalization isn't like a binary thing it's not like you don't have it and then you do have it and these are the results you expect when you do have it right like everybody's doing personalization to some extent and like how much, Improvement in results you're going to get is going to be directly related to how bad your experience was before and how far you improve it. Scot: [27:33] Yeah yeah could so it could be just started with really bad bad numbers and then didn't kind of. Jason: [27:40] Exactly so I wouldn't I mean I wouldn't be like putting too much stock in these like benchmarks are case studies as like predictive in any way of what an individual user will get but like of course if you can get more customer data and use it to have more relevant experiences that's going to be you know benefit. Scot: [27:57] Now one thing I'm noticing is previous shoptalk sweat with this whole panel format this is sounding much more like individual speaker was that that kind of change of the format. Jason: [28:08] Not necessarily so they kind of have a few formats so they have like they have the key notes which is almost always, an interview that presenter an interviewer and that that was still true so then they have track key notes and attract keynote is usually in individual speaker or an individual speaker followed by an interview and then they have these panel formats and so in some cases, I'm cherry picking what I thought was interesting from one speaker and a panel of three but in a bunch of cases these were track Keynotes. Scot: [28:47] Got it. Jason: [28:49] And we'll get to the very best track keynote in a minute which you know was obviously mine. Scot: [28:56] No bias there. Jason: [28:58] Yeah, so a lot of talk about the best and most cost-effective ways to acquire customers so you know there was a ton of sessions talking about live streaming and kind of the, the kind of at this point I'll call it the kind of predictable tripe that like oh my gosh you live streaming is huge in China and may or may not be coming to the u.s. but you should be testing it like you know Google obviously had a big keynote talking primarily about live streaming a ton of practitioners were talking in particular about like their experience on Tik-Tok and successful live streaming HSN was obviously talking about their success and then there were some, shop shops is a live streaming platform that you know gave an interesting case study and then, I would say there's always a couple of vendors that like emerge I don't know if they're necessarily the best or not but like kind of win the show for share of voice and so every time someone's talking about live Commerce the vendor that they were talking about partnering with was firework which is a enabler of live streaming, Commerce and so it felt to me like they they did a good job showing up in all these conversations are you bullish on live streaming. Scot: [30:17] I am but it's because you have trained me that it's so big in China and then you know it's one of those things, a lot of the stuff in China we thought would be good kind of come across as not like chat Commerce and why bow and all that so but it's one where you know I see these influencers and I think it will catch on because we've got, the Kardashians and if they ever did a live stream or something like that it would be huge we just need we need like that spark and kind of a unique American take on it, probably from a Content perspective not underlying technology but it all has to come together. Jason: [30:52] Yeah so I don't like we may need a an updated deep dive on live streaming in China because it's actually, it's evolving super rapidly like there was this interesting phenomenon at first where all the live streaming was happening on retail platforms so it was like, kind of influencers that got made famous by Ali Baba and j.d. on their platform so think of it as people were consuming live streaming on Walmart.com not on tick tock, and then the government kind of crack down on some of these influencers who apparently weren't paying taxes, and and it kind of shifted the live streaming to the social platform so no like now Dao Yuan which is Tick-Tock in China is. The destination for live-streaming so it's just been interesting, but one wave live streaming I really like and I think coach was talking a lot about in their their track he noted the show, is sales associates as in as micro influencers and doing live streaming either from the store or after hours which. Scot: [31:55] Yeah we'll have to get caught up on them. Jason: [31:58] It's a related Trend that got a lot of Buzz this show as another way of acquiring customers as micro influencers that's another one that I'm kind of bullish on and there were some good case studies there, so Jill Ramsey is the CEO of AKA Brands was talking about like micro influencers being their most successful new customer acquisition strategy there are a bunch of apparel brands, um one that I hadn't thought of that I feel like I need to get updated on more, Alyssa Walt is the chief business officer for Burton Snowboards so you know all the snowboarding accessories, and she was talking about they were having huge success using NCAA athletes as influencers, and of course if you're not following it closely that used to be illegal for or not illegal but like it was a gainst the NCA term so you lose your college eligibility of you made any money as a, influence our sponsor and now their college athletes are all permission to. To endorse products and make money and so it's kind of open this new, new channel if you have a product that's appropriate to be. [33:13] Advocated by college athlete so that seemed interesting that they were a fast mover there, and then I mentioned coach was definitely leaning into influencers and particularly using sales associates as influencers. Scot: [33:29] Cool aunt heard the NCAA thing yielding some some fruit so that's interesting to hear. Jason: [33:35] Yeah I've seen some funny like local case studies where do I go up a car dealership hired some NCAA athletes and as you could imagine, like some of them are awful and some of them are awesome. So I just like some of the like the quality of the deliveries have been pretty funny and uneven. [33:55] So another big talking point that kind of it was not the topic of a lot of sessions but it got mentioned in a lot of sessions including mine was the emergence of retail media networks and I would say that was, something that came up at a lot in hallway conversations more so than in like content on the stage. But everybody and their brother you know now has a retail media Network and they you know they're all doubling down and one thing they're all doing is expanding, Beyond digital search so you know more different ad platforms on their websites but increasingly a lot of. Media opportunities in stores so you and I were talking about some of these offline like you know you know in-store displays and things like that, and then also a bunch of these retail media networks are offering dsps and letting you buy ads on Google or Facebook using, first-party targeting from the retailer so you know you think about the depreciation of cookies in your ability to buy your own look-alike audience on Facebook, you know you can still pay Walmart to buy look like audiences on Facebook for you and that can be pretty successful. [35:14] So we already talked about the payment Trends another big Trend that came up a lot we kind of covered it in the, the Keynotes was the rapid Commerce being a big thing and then what I wanted to put on your radar screen. When the came up an awful lot a few times in sessions and then a lot in the hallway is everyone is metaverse curious. Scot: [35:41] Yeah yeah I read one of the summary as was everyone's talking about metaverse but no one thinks they'll actually be an e-commerce down there so I don't know we're people thinking there's actually going to be some Commerce happening or they were just. What is this wise. Jason: [35:56] So I don't know that's a good question I tried to ask probing questions and like the vast majority of people you talk to don't actually understand what they even meet like there's a lot of confluent, compilation of terms right like web 3 metaverse, um blockchains cryptocurrencies and so it's it's you know you're talking to someone about the metaverse and then they're telling you why they invested in Bitcoin and you go well like those are related but they're not the same thing. Scot: [36:28] Yeah it's like 13. Jason: [36:30] Yeah but so there are a couple case studies from some gaming companies that we're doing some in-game Commerce again Mackenzie like kind of had some consumed like part of their presentation had all these like, evolving consumer Trends and they again there's a stated preference for take it with a huge grain of salt um but they ask customers how many hours a day they expected to spend in the meadow verse five years from now and the average answer was 4 hours a day, and for for Jen's he's the average our answer was nine hours a day. Scot: [37:03] You know every pretty much every waking hour or sleeping hour will be the members. Jason: [37:09] Yeah and, you know I'll tell you about my evolving opinion The Meta verse in a minute but you know a really interesting question is what it like is like are we in the meta verse right now like like a zoom call the metaverse is. But Facebook messenger chat the med over like you know the there's a lot of gray area in definitions. Scot: [37:34] Nursing. Jason: [37:36] And so if you can't like if all my time on Twitter is in the meadow verse then I might be close to that average now. Scot: [37:44] Yeah yeah I don't know I don't think that counts. Jason: [37:49] And so I will highlight like I di think we have a metaverse Commerce Deep dive in in our near future, everybody wants to learn about it and understand it like I've been doing some kind of meta verse 101 Commerce conversations with a bunch of clients, and like at the very least if you're going to be an early mover and do some piloting like there are a bunch of easy to make tragic mistakes to make early on that you should. You should be aware of and so it just you know it might be an interesting topic for us to do a deep dive on. Scot: [38:25] Yeah we'll put it on the list. Jason: [38:27] Yeah and I got corralled by everybody's favorite venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz and they're wildly boyish on the members. Scot: [38:36] Which which one of the folks steamer. Jason: [38:40] So they now have like a whole team, dedicate like that and you probably know them better than I do but you know they're trying to have this spin of providing all these services to entrepreneurs so they have like a lot of kind of. Share real sources and so you know the pitch to me is like, you know man if you have any client projects like we can play matchmaker and help introduce you to the right you don't companies in our portfolio and stuff like that so the these were not like Investment Partners these were all operating partners. There were trying to accelerate business for their portfolio companies that were pitching me. Scot: [39:25] I knew they had crypto Focus I didn't know they had a team thinking about the meadow verse that sinners. Jason: [39:29] They do have a crypto focus and I'm saying metaverse but I'll tell you what they really have their their their in addition their trip to focus they have a web 3 Focus. Scot: [39:38] Okay they're kind of loving it all together. Jason: [39:39] Um yeah which there is an important distinction between metaverse and web 3 which would be fun to talk about it we do a deep dive. Scot: [39:47] Yeah alright good teaser. Jason: [39:49] Awesome, lot of talk I mentioned this already but there was a lot of talk about the return of stores which is funny because you know I wasn't where stores went away, but maybe the buzz of the stores went away and you know now like stores are coming pretty well against their soft pandemic numbers and digital is comping, not as well against their Mega pandemic numbers and so, there's a way in which you look at it and go oh man you know store growth is unusually high and digital growth is unusually low. [40:22] I think that's kind of a misunderstanding of the data a little bit in a lot of cases but that was, a big hallway conversation and then the conversation that I didn't hear that really surprised me I mentioned the mood was really kind of Rosie, I have to be honest all my one-on-ones with clients leading up to the show have not been Rosy like there's a, awful lot of concern amongst the folks I work with about what everybody's calling the macros and you know by that they mean, like inflation persistent supply chain problems you know consistent persistent like economic instability like housing supplies and cost-of-living going up like all these, these kind of Doom and Gloom Financial measures and then you throw you know gas prices in war in Europe, on top of all that and I'm talking to a bunch of people that are like really worried about the Financial Health and spending ability of their customer base and there was none of that at the show. Scot: [41:24] Yeah yeah you know the consumer confidence numbers taken a precipitous fall which I always use is kind of my barometer and I'm I am also worried about the macros. Jason: [41:36] Yeah I mean you know I get these wrong all the time but there was a time early in the pandemic when, when you know my narrative was like the pandemics probably going to cause a recession and it's probably going to end with a period of like crazy accelerated spending similar to The Roaring 20s and the irony is, the opposite kind of happened like the pandemic like drove a two-year period of crazy spending and it feels like it's now ending in her session. Scot: [42:07] Yeah yeah it's kind of kind of backwards from what we all thought. Jason: [42:11] Yeah I hope that's not how it all plays out but. Scot: [42:14] Shown up in the numbers like you know the numbers that you talked about the retail numbers the but so it's either not happening or its early indications and we haven't seen it yet that's just kind of the big concern. Jason: [42:25] Yeah yeah no and I will tell you like if and it's going to come up here pretty soon I think another week. Last March was a mega month for retail and so the comps this March. Are copying against are really hard number and you know a lot of people feel that like the macros like really started to show up in the consumer numbers this March and so if, like there's a chance that like the comps are going to be really ugly this March it's going to be a interesting month to watch. Scot: [43:02] All right we'll keep an eye out. Jason: [43:03] Yeah I did say the last best session best session for last, I did a track keynote talking about achieving digital profitability right and I so I was the one Doom and Gloom session I'm like hey there is a bunch of macro concern over out there like obviously there was a bunch of extra digital, um activity and now the challenge we all have to face as we got to figure out how to bring more profit to our digital business and so I did a whole, track keynote talking about, um opportunities to improve the profitability and then I had a guest Jerome Griffith who's the CEO of lands and like I did a, like a 15-minute presentation and then we did like a 20-minute fireside chat talking about the best strategies to make money in this climate. So I tried to channel my inner Scott as much as possible. Scot: [43:56] What were some of the what are some of those strategies. Jason: [44:00] Um I mean it's it's black and tackling stuff we kind of you know talked about you know typical framework of, reducing cost getting more customers you know generating more revenue from each customer and then we kind of hit on, our favorite tactics within each of those three buckets Jerome like you know by far feels that the, the easiest best place to start is on the cost controls right and he's in the apparel space historically the apparel space does a horrible job of demand forecasting. [44:36] So they make the wrong stuff and they make too much stuff in that really hurts costs and you know just just fundamental costs of goods and and having good rigor around controlling, manufacturing cost is his kind of home base but like the part of his. [44:56] Feedback that was super interesting to me is lands in was a direct-to-consumer company so they were a company that was born as a catalog that sold 100% direct-to-consumer, they got acquired by Sears so then they were exclusively available on the lands in catalog and in Sears stores, and they were acquired by Sears I greatest years was starting to get distressed and turning into a fast Eddie Discounters and so suddenly lands in which hadn't done any discounting was heavily discounted, and then they got spun off from Sears and you know tried to recover their non discount price point and, they expanded into a bunch of other channels so today you can buy lands and direct from their website which is still about 50 percent of their sales but they sell wholesale through Macy's and Kohl's, which you know our discount channels and then they they also sell 1p on Amazon and so it was interesting he talked about wholesale and marketplaces being, a very important and vibrant customer acquisition strategy for a direct-to-consumer company and so he felt like. [46:07] Like the customers that he was meeting at Kohl's were incremental to the customers he met directly and that like partnering with coals and Macy's was, way more cost-effective way to acquire customers then Facebook ads. Scot: [46:20] Nursing and then I like the marketplace take that's a that's a good one. Jason: [46:24] Yeah yeah yeah so he I mean he was kind of like you got to be where the customer is control your costs, and then you know there are things like if you are direct-to-consumer like you should launch a retail media Network and try to supplement your, your Revenue with those kinds of tools and you know I did some stuff just on basic block and tackling and on mobile experiences that we all still get wrong and improving mobile conversion and stuff like that. Scot: [46:54] The was there a standing ovation at the end of the session. Jason: [46:59] There was there was because I said I was going to shut up now and that that generated incredible standing ovation. Scot: [47:05] Did you do the whole Spiel of if you like this I've got 290 hours out there on the internet for you. Jason: [47:11] I did but it's 3:00 because even though we only have 290 shows the average one is longer than an hour. Scot: [47:17] Nice yeah yeah good yeah some guy we interviewed somebody's like I've listened to all your podcast is like I'm not really sure yet. Jason: [47:28] Yeah although I will tell you I ran into a ton of people so many nice comments I'm so grateful like the thing I feel bad about when you miss a show is, just so many random people like recognize our name on my badge and I had a Jason and Scot show badge, and like we're honest with Sinners and had great feedback and I was just found out talk to all these people and and it's nice to hear that people appreciate what we do and if you don't know the most common, comment I get about the show is that oh yeah I listened at 1.25 speed or 1.5 speed while I'm at on my exercise bike. And I want to say for the first time ever I met a guy who's a regular listener to the show that said he listened at 2X and that I found I sounded kind of sleepy and tired in real life. Scot: [48:18] This is in your holding two coffees did you have the thing where you're speaking and someone recognizes your voice and they're looking around like a weight had I've heard that voice before that happens to us it. Jason: [48:32] It's Starbucks every single time because but I mean hey I spent a lot of time standing in a Starbucks line and I spend a lot of time talking so a lot of people have the chance to hear my voice and go wait a minute you sound familiar. Scot: [48:43] Did anyone make fun of your title that's my favorite part. Jason: [48:46] So yes but like in fairness there mostly people that are friends of yours or mine that just like on team Scott. Scot: [48:55] Okay they're just just carrying on the chief digital retail analytics customer Journey officer. Nice cool did you guys did your company have a been big shindig was it a good show for you guys. Jason: [49:11] It was it was it was also fun because I had a fair amount of co-workers their it was fun to spend time with them and we had a team dinner that was awesome. The most purposes agencies wouldn't necessarily exhibit but we own a company that helps Implement a lot of retail media networks called Citrus ad and so they had a booth there so I it was fun to hang out with them a little bit their founder by the way we might have I try not to put pupusas people in our show very often but we might have to have him on because he's a two-time very successful entrepreneur he tricked us into buying his his most recent company. He also is a former professional Australian Rules Football player like legit. Scot: [49:58] Oh ah yeah that's that weird football that they have yeah it's kind of fatter and stubby or than our football. Jason: [50:06] What version of football is not weird that okay yeah. Scot: [50:08] Cool well yeah and we should talk about if pupal sis needs to acquire any car washes with you you and I can have that one offline. Jason: [50:18] Yeah yeah for sure you I get as you can imagine that's that's most of the cycles that that I spend it purposes is pitching on us leaning into the car wash space. Scot: [50:28] Cool did you get a chance to walk through the booths and the the show floor and see Annie was that well traffic to an any any kind of. Jason: [50:38] Yeah it's always it's always hard to tell I do think shoptalk one of the things shoptalk does well is two things they try to have some events in the floor. Um so so you know like the lunches and stuff you kind of have to walk through the tradeshow to get to the lunches so they try to artificially create some traffic but one thing I really appreciate about shoptalk is, they have down time in the agenda when there's no track or keynote content like they have like two hours a day and part of the reason is they have this this function cut these out meet up so I can retailer can attend shop up shoptalk for free if they agree to take like five meetings with vendors and then these vendors pay for these meetings and so they have to have a window to do those meetings in and so I appreciate that, it creates a more natural opportunity for people to walk the show and discover vendors without feeling like you're missing something. Scot: [51:36] Crinkle how many retailers did you meet with. Jason: [51:40] Yeah so I do always try to walk the show and I do try to stop and talk to some booths I got to be honest there's a weird dynamic Scott and I feel like you would appreciate this but Walking the Floor makes me feel old because, I walk the floor and, here's basically what goes on in my mind I don't recognize the name of any of the vendors and then I agreed to sign for a second and then I figure out that there are vendor I know super well that's changed their name three times. And so it's like I feel like the Wikipedia that's like remembering oh yeah you used to be this and now you're this and now you're that and then I know I go oh and I know these 3 people that work there right now. It is now the case that all the people I know that work at all these vendors are too old and Senior to be in the booth so. I know I never run into any folks I know in the booth that's always the the Next Generation. Scot: [52:33] Yeah and then I'll get excited that you're a retailer and then you're a podcaster and they're like. Jason: [52:39] Yeah and that's my my unfulfilled young Lame Game I play with all of them is. You know by and large they're like so what do you do and I go I'm mostly just talk about this stuff all the time and there and they like think I'm lying when in fact that's exactly what I said. Scot: [52:55] The new about the 3:00. Jason: [52:58] Yeah exactly. And then in a couple cases it Dawns on them wait a minute you're the Jason and Scot show and they like chase me down in the hallway and go you I listen to your podcast. Scot: [53:08] Very cool. Jason: [53:10] Then we go into those sleepy tired thing anyway but in the interest of bringing the average down I feel like I've covered all the show do you feel like you caught up on everything you missed by not being there. Scot: [53:23] I do the one thing that I've heard chatter from the folks I talk to is this continued pressure on Shopify you ever seen they announce their last quarter's earnings Q4 their stock has been on a precipitous slide that they haven't seen since their IPO and like 2016 I think, maybe 15 was that that come up at all or no. Jason: [53:50] It didn't come up a lot and I'm trying to remember like I actually don't think they had a booth at the show which is interesting. I could be wrong on that but I kind of don't think they had had a big booth, and yeah I mean you know obviously they're totally lumped into this whole category of companies that did amazing in the beginning of the pandemic and then like you know seem like they acted like they would continue to, to grow that pace and obviously couldn't and then you know the their stock got punished for it. Scot: [54:23] Yeah yeah and there's been a lot of Wall Street notes out saying you know that I think what freaked everyone out is the fact they're going to invest in infrastructure meaning warehouses and there's a lot of Wall Street folks trying to say. It's not that bad it's only a billion dollars but I remain skeptical that that's going to be enough and then, yep so we should just wondering if that was. Jason: [54:48] Yeah I mean if anything I would say there are a lot more fulfillment companies that would be competing with a Shopify fulfillment Network and a lot more you like I'll tell you where Shopify has a ton of competition at this show are like. POS systems which is actually a meaningful part of shopify's offering now and you know like kind of. Solutions as a service besides the e-commerce site the payment systems and all of these things that you know Shopify does and I will say it's kind of funny. I still think like a lot of people try to describe themselves as the Shopify of X which. Like doesn't sound as good as it did a couple years ago and you still hear people trying to say like we're the word be Parker of X and I'm like have you looked at worry Parker stuffers. Scot: [55:37] Yeah how about how about some of our friends from The Headless Commerce industry was there a lot of a lot of Buzz there with the. Jason: [55:47] Yeah, so those platforms were there in full strength Fazal and fabric had a big presence there you remember they raised some good money right before the show, we had Kelly on from a Commerce tools you know a number of episodes ago and he talked about the mock Alliance and that mock Alliance, has really gained a lot of traction like I'm seeing a lot more and more vendors emerging that are now members of the mock Alliance so it seems like. You know that that's not just a marketing thing that's kind of like a legitimate Trade Organization for all these headless providers. Scot: [56:27] Nursing was there like common badging throughout or something like that. Jason: [56:31] Well yeah there's a mock Alliance logo that was on a bunch of booths I they may have had events I wasn't able to like attend any of their. There are social events but yeah it seems like it's getting traction I don't know if this is a perfect show for that like. There was an ERA when like everybody needed a platform you need to go to a show to meet vendors and find out about platforms like I kind of think the average attendee here has a platform today and so you know maybe there's some that are thinking about switching. But I have a feeling that those booths have gone a little bit more from customer acquisition to. Customer relationship management and retention at the shows. Scot: [57:11] Yeah yeah nursing will cope well we appreciate you going out and braving the wild environs of the Las Vegas hotel circuit and this the Starbucks to report back to us. Jason: [57:25] It was my pleasure and if she's listening definitely congratulations to Christina Gibson and the whole team at shoptalk I do think they put on a good show and it's, like I think it's definitely set itself up as the preeminent kind of digital Commerce show in our industry now. [57:59] Yeah and until next time happy Commercing.
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