Podcasts about retailer

In this second part of Brandon's interview with Adam Devine, get a backstage pass to the inner workings of Divine Concepts: networking, creating an arsenal of options for customers, guiding the next generation of car shops. Above all, get another taste of the love that Adam has for the 12-volt industry. Adam Devine has over twenty years of experience in the automotive stereo industry. In those two decades, he's earned many awards for his stellar business practice, including Retailer of the Year. He now runs his own shop in Naples, Florida, which is so successful that it has already nearly paid itself off. On this episode of Business, Cars, & Cigars, Adam goes in-depth about how he built his brand. He's been working tirelessly since the Divine Concepts became a reality to become a well-known, highly-reputable company. Throughout his years in the 12-volt industry, he's learned the importance of planning ahead. Both Brandon and Adam have similar ideas on how to run their shops; tune in to hear their ideas on running a team, being your own worst critic, and catching up on the learning curve. What You'll Learn: Why both Adam and Brandon believe in the law of diminishing return How Adam built both a local customer base and a national brand awareness What Adam's 30-60-90 plan looked like as he was preparing to open his business And so much more! Favorite Quote: “You've got to work as hard as you can, because you get out what you put in. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. ” Adam Devine How to Get Involved: You can find & connect with Adam on LinkedIn. Keep up-to-date with Brandon by adding him on LinkedIn. The aftermarket automotive industry is thriving and growing. Business, Cars, and Cigars invites you to pour a drink or pull out a cigar and talk business. With a diverse lineup of guests from all industries, we're looking for ideas that we can incorporate into our automotive businesses. With 25+ years in the automotive industry and 10+ years owning his own business, your host Brandon Greene knows which questions to ask to give you the insider edge.

Want to offer retailer bundles as higher end pledge tiers on Kickstarter? In order to do it right, you'll need to understand how retailers think and how to craft rewards that will be appealing to them. In this mini-training, Tyler will share some of his top tips for getting retailers on board your Kickstarter campaigns!

“I may not be the master craftsman,” Adam says, “but the voice in my head won't let me stop until it's perfect.” This is the business practice that has allowed him to build an incredibly successful shop, one that's ready to expand after just three years. Adam Devine has over twenty years of experience in the automotive stereo industry. In those two decades, he's earned many awards for his stellar business practice, including Retailer of the Year. He now runs his own shop in Naples, Florida, which is so successful that it has already nearly paid itself off. On this episode of Business, Cars, & Cigars, listen to Adam as he recounts his journey to the 12 volt world. Even as he was studying for his MACP certification, he was top of his class, and now he's an industry leader. Still, he always remembers what's important to him–family, friends, good design. Tune in today to hear all about Adam's shop in Naples, his passions in the industry, and his drive to grow professionally to avoid what he calls “complacency and insanity.” What You'll Learn: Why Adam would rather train someone with zero automotive experience How the shop dog got the nickname “HR” Why Adam always springs for universal parts And so much more! Favorite Quote: “Quality is a non-negotiable for us. We'll do it the right way, the first time.” Adam Devine How to Get Involved: You can find & connect with Adam on LinkedIn. Keep up-to-date with Brandon by adding him on LinkedIn. The aftermarket automotive industry is thriving and growing. Business, Cars, and Cigars invites you to pour a drink or pull out a cigar and talk business. With a diverse lineup of guests from all industries, we're looking for ideas that we can incorporate into our automotive businesses. With 25+ years in the automotive industry and 10+ years owning his own business, your host Brandon Greene knows which questions to ask to give you the insider edge.

Grace reviews interesting retailer trends from last year and what she hopes to see in 2022. She also welcomes FreightWaves' 3PL expert Mary O'Connell to discuss ways brokers can service retailers and best practices to avoid issues with their shipments.Follow Point of Sale on Apple PodcastsFollow Point of Sale on SpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

As a solo designer, do you wonder how larger gift basket retailers organize their business?This episode takes you behind the scenes to experience what I learned about making and selling gift baskets at a walk-in store.There was lots of insight, which includes the three lessons I share with you.Thank you for subscribing to Gift Basket Business, and be sure to rate the podcast through your favorite listening device!How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Book: https://pxlme.me/gbbookJoin the 6 week gift basket course! https://pxlme.me/gbbedcourseA five-minute conversation with me can solve that big problem. https://pxlme.me/sgfclaritySupport the show (https://paypal.me/sgf)

This series is not just to share the highlight reel of real retailers' success, but also the ups and downs as retailers grow into their confidence, CEO role to see that success. It is a journey. Meet Melanie Kolb. Melanie's shop owner journey is a remarkable one. Her business growth and her love for her customers has grown since day one due to her hard work, following her dream, and pushing through the hard things with determination. Like many, Melanie started out as a hobby, progressed to booths and soon grew to vintage pop-up markets. But she wanted to stop traveling and create a destination shop. She made a pivotal decision to set up shop on her beautiful farm in Alabama, donned her CEO hat and set up marketing strategies to attract her customers to her farm, using things like Facebook Lives selling her french farmhouse decor. We discuss fear of failure, reverse engineering, keeping customers happy, planning, and knowing your financial numbers. All CEO decisions that helped Cedar Grove Farms become the destination shop that it is today. As Melanie said, "No one's expecting us to be perfect except ourselves. If we let that go, we're a lot happier. Just be consistent, do what you love, love on your customers, and everybody's happy." Full show notes at https://wendybatten.com/episode-88/

Thank you and Cheers to 2022Support the show (https://www.nbda.com/donate)

Sri, PVSB, Melissa Burdick & Andrea Leigh, AKA the #Fresh 4, deliver the annual Omni Awards for Excellence in Omnichannel DigitalThis is episode 3 of 3 and awards go to Retailers for:Best in classBest UGC ExperienceMost improvedRising starMost innovativeBest enablerPlease provide the CPG Guys feedback at http://ratethispodcast.com/cpgguysCPG Guys Website: http://CPGGuys.comCPG Guys on Instagram: https://instagram.com/cpgguysPlease follow the Network of Executive Women at http://newonline.org/cpgguysDISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual's use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.

Charlie Eisenhood and Josh Mansfield welcome in Infinite Discs' Alan Barker, OTB Discs' Aaron Rowley and Danny Corbett, Birdie Disc Golf's Derek Fell, and Skybreed Discs' Justin Taylor for a wide-ranging conversation about the retail side of disc golf, the COVID boom, supply chain challenges, and a whole lot more. It's a fascinating look inside a key part of the disc golf economy.

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

Dec. 21, 2021 - New York's latest mask mandate has fallen largely on the state's retailers, so we checked in with Retail Council of New York State President & CEO Melissa O'Connor to learn how this responsibility is going.

Executive Chair: Arboretum - National Retailer of The Year 2021

A Holiday Poem for the Independent Bicycle RetailerSupport the show (https://www.nbda.com/donate)

In this week's Fast Five podcast, sponsored by Takeoff and the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, our good friends Kristin Kohler Burrows and David Ritter stop by to help Chris and Anne hand out this year's Omni Talk 2021 Retail Awards! Categories up for grabs include: - Retailer of the Year - Retail CEO of the Year - Retail Technology of the Year - Most Overhyped Technology of the Year - Retail Headline of the Year - Best New Retail Partnership of the Year - And, much, much more! To redeem your $300 discount on the Manifest Conference, visit: https://manife.st/continue-registrati... To learn more about the A&M Consumer & Retail Group, visit: https://alvarezandmarsal-crg.com/ To learn more about Takeoff, visit: http://www.takeoff.com/ Plus, check out our ranking in Feedspot's 45 Top Retail Podcasts: blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/

This week on The Digital Marketing Scoop, Mark is talking about one ad platform that you should be on if you are an ecommerce retailer.During the episode, Mark talks about one ad platform that can help improve your online sales and bring in new customers. If you are new to the world of ecommerce or an existing business that has an ecommerce website and want to improve your online sales, tune in to this week's episode to find out which ad platform Mark is talking about.Follow CLIQ on:Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/cliqmediaandmarketingInstagramhttps://www.instagram.com/cliq.ieTwitterhttps://twitter.com/Cliq_ieLinkedinhttps://ie.linkedin.com/company/cliq-media-&-marketingYouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1PmmAJcTTQ-XWDfTyzbiwgTikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@cliqtok

Pinterest is seeing a huge surge in use for retail businesses, with tools that are on par or better than other social media platforms. It inhabits the "dreamer" or "planning" stage of a project, which can allow retailers to build a unique bond with potential shoppers. Mike spoke with Sara from D Geller in Georgia, Deeb from Graziella Fine Jewellery in Ontario, two Punchmark clients with a strong understanding of e-commerce, about how they are marketing through the platform, if they will lean into Pinterest more in 2022, and what you can expect as a budget.

Thinking of getting into painting, or looking to replace your paintbrushes? Then take a look at the latest range from Art Supply Central on Amazon UK, for top-quality art supplies at affordable prices! Go to https://www.amazon.co.uk/Artist-Synthetic-Brushes-Watercolour-Guarantee/dp/B00KEW480M (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Artist-Synthetic-Brushes-Watercolour-Guarantee/dp/B00KEW480M) for more information.

Amie Jo and I are back with some great news about a veteran owned project from start to finish...a new retailer exclusive cover for Alaska's Comic Book Shop! Don't forget to follow us on Instagram

Bring out your creative retailer sparkSupport the show (https://www.nbda.com/donate)

On this week's episode, Danni Hewson talks about the impact Omicron is still having on markets – in particular, what it means for a potential interest rate rise next week – but has some positive news for us from retailers. We also look at the ongoing Evergrande saga, and how China is managing the issue. Laura Suter talks about how rising house prices are particularly hitting Lifetime ISA savers, and may leave them with a hefty bill, while Tom Selby assesses how LISAs stack up against a pension as a retirement savings option, in Pension Corner. As Christmas gets closer, we also look at the monetary gifts people are planning to give this year, and who is keeping gift cards alive. And Laura speaks to Prakash Chandramohan from TISA about how more younger people can get into investing.

Post 16X per month of which 50% is created and 50% is curated (UGC, Fan photos, influencers, personality builders etc.) of the 24 assets per quarter (8X3 months) 3 BIGGER/BETTER type messages (New innovation, New BIG retailer, any sort of inertia news) = 1X per month 12 Retailer (or any sales channel) Support type messages = 1X per week 9 DTP (describe your product and explain to me why I should care) = 3X per month =24

Vahan Ajamian is a Capital Markets professional and one of the first analysts to cover the North American #cannabis sector. High Tide is a leading retail-focused cannabis company with bricks and mortar as well as global #ecommerce assets. The Company is the largest Canadian retailer of recreational cannabis as measured by revenue. #HITI spent the last decade developing an intimate understanding of cannabis consumers and a suite of retail experiences to service their interests, uniquely positioning #HighTide for international expansion through emerging legal markets. Summary: learning from #Medmen #1 cannabis retailer in Canada (by revenue) Are same store sales decreasing? Ecommerce, discounts & the supply chain Episode 839 The #TalkingHedge interviews Vahan Ajamian, Capital Markets Advisor at Hight Tide Inc.... https://youtu.be/05HsaO3lMLQ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/talkinghedge/support

Tips to escape zombie modeSupport the show (https://www.nbda.com/donate)

EP282 - Cyberweek Recap with Salesforce's Rob Garf  Rob Garf (@retailrobgarf) is VP and GM, Retail at Salesforce. Rob returns to the show for the third time (EP249 and EP110) to talk about November, and especially cyber week e-commerce sales. The Salesforce shopping index combines data and holiday insights on the activity of more than a billion global shoppers across more than 54 countries powered by Commerce Cloud, billions of consumer engagements and millions of public social media conversations through Marketing Cloud, and customer service data powered by Service Cloud. We cover e-commerce sales in November 2021 vs 2020 and 2019. First mile issues, last mile issues, inflation, winning and losing categories, predictions for December. Episode 282 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, November 30th, 2021 http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 282 being recorded on Tuesday November 30th 20:21 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners well Jason we're in the thick of it we are recording this the day after Cyber Monday this is our favorite time of the year and who better to help us recap the turkey five than longtime friend of the show Rob Garf he is the VP and GM retailgeek at Salesforce and he is here to sling some hot data and some fresh takes welcome Rob. Rob: [1:06] Hey Scott Jason it's great to be here as always happy holidays. Jason: [1:12] Happy holidays to you Rob I feel like it wouldn't be holidays if I if we weren't recording a podcast with you it's kind of an annual tradition. Rob: [1:20] Absolutely look forward to it every year. Jason: [1:22] So before we jump into it remind our listeners who you are and what you do for Salesforce. Rob: [1:30] Yeah absolutely some VP and GM for retail so what that means is I oversee the industry product solution and insights and the insights portion is really what brings me here today we have a team whose Charter is really to stay out in the industry understand where. The retail space is going and that helps us really think about our products and solution but also have really interesting. And informative conversations with our customers as well and most of that data and Analysis is based on our shopping index are shopping index looks at all the data that flows through the Commerce Cloud platform we obviously bubble that up. We strip out all the pii data and it really becomes the de facto standard of what's happening in retail and this is our holiday it's our Super Bowl where we really allow the data to come to life and not only project where. The industry is going over the critical holiday time but report on it so it's been a couple of sleepless nights over the last week and really excited to be here today to crawl through the data and just have really good conversations with two good friends. Jason: [2:38] We are excited to do it and I'm extra excited because if I'm not mistaken it seems like you have a bigger scope than you did last time you were on the show did you get a promotion because of what a good job you did on the show. Rob: [2:52] I think it was exactly that and I appreciate it by the way your check is in the mail yeah you know certainly. It's important to Salesforce to look at Industries and industries as a practice within Salesforce has really then one of the focus one of the priority areas over the last couple years and so for retail taking a real close look at what products what Solutions we have to bring to Market across the entire supply chain obviously in Salesforce we grew up in the sales and service space grew to marketing Commerce now and analytics and data and collaboration but we want to look at it always through the industry lens and in this case that's retail so it's my Charter along with the insights that I talked about a minute ago to oversee our product and solution strategy so thanks for that help by the way. Jason: [3:43] It was well-earned and well-deserved so good props test Salesforce erect for recognizing talent and I want to call out I feel like you're famous for three things first for being on the Jason and Scot show. Second for all the great work you do foreign with your co-workers at Salesforce and then third you are the. Kind of egotistical center of the whole garfi movement. Rob: [4:11] Haha you know I miss that's one of the many things I miss about the pandemic is not being able to do live gar fees that I've been out on the road. Over the last I don't know how to say four to six weeks or so and it's been a highlight to get back at that a little bit so can you promise me gentlemen in a couple weeks hopefully knock on wood will be back in New York for NRF and we can get another garfi of us we can try it virtually here it's just not always the same so we can see how that plays out. Scot: [4:42] Yeah yeah we're always up for garfi and that's got several in my library. Jason: [4:46] So before we move on from that explain to our listeners what a garfi is. Rob: [4:51] Yeah of course so garfi obviously a play on selfie and you know I struggled for a long time trying to find my persona. Via social you know first was LinkedIn and you know what I realized is I spent a lot of time on the road and when I'm on the road I need a lot of awesome people and when I meet those people I get really inspired and so I just you know for no plan in particular started taking pictures with them and me whether it's one-on-one one you know a few of us or me up on stage and just turning around and doing I selfie with a bunch of people in the crowd and a much more creative person than I am. Salesforce's social media team all of a sudden one day said that's a garfi and then you know really where it came to life is over and our F that same person had a great idea to say hey why don't we make some money for a charity by. [5:53] Donating a certain amount of money. For every time somebody takes a selfie or a garfi with me and that I guess I don't know two or three years running we've connected and collaborated with the retail orphan initiative great music in friends and really raise money for kids in need and so it has a nice altruistic angle to it which of course is part of Salesforce and ar111 model and giving back really please really closely to our values so I'm able to do a couple of things, really share with those in the social sphere what I'm up to hopefully helping. Inspire them like it's expired inspired me and then finally raise some money in and around NRL so that's kind of I don't know if I've ever shared and not much detail the Genesis of it but it was fun doing it so thanks for asking. Jason: [6:49] Yeah and I also admire I feel like it's an underappreciated talent to take a good selfie I feel like I really struggled frame the photo well with my arm fully extended and hit the shutter and you I don't know if you started out doing it this easily but I feel like in more recent years it seems like you do it effortlessly so just hats off to you on your quality of your selfies. Rob: [7:12] I mean that's the best compliment I'll get all day or holiday I can tell you that right now I started I was really bad like really bad and now my family like I'm the go-to during holidays to be able to do it so yeah it's you know chin up don't go you know don't angle to I don't go to Le I mean I could write probably a social posts are a blogger I don't know there might be something in there. Jason: [7:36] Art of the the art of the garfi. Rob: [7:37] The art of the confit. Jason: [7:39] Yeah I strongly I strongly encourage that and then getting slightly closer to like topics that that our listeners came for I do want to caveat one thing we're going to be talking a lot about how holiday has played out and what the interesting Trends are and just I want to underscore the mainland's you're looking at this through is a online lens so I'm sure I'm sure the bulk of your clients are omni-channel and you get some some good insight into what's happening in stores but the actual data set is measuring how much consumers shop and buy on websites is that do I have that right. Rob: [8:16] Totally you got that right I mean if you think about it as I mentioned the shopping and X which we have throughout the year and we release it quarterly is really the backbone of it it's billions and billions of Shoppers digitally it's across thousands of sites across dozens and dozens of countries yeah like you said we do do primary research and we do have some instrumentation understand some of the things that show the intersection between online and digital but the short answer to your point Jason it is really primarily the digital shopping that we've seen. Scot: [8:53] We'll call let's that's really good backdrop and we should definitely dig into the garfi thing on another episode but the enough foreshadowing how are things going for the holiday season give us kind of the the big picture. Rob: [9:08] Yeah well you know coming into this sky the way we're looking at it even going back till June was you know if last year's headline with ship a gettin was all around a smile how and if products are going to get to the doorstep of the consumer this has been all about the first mile we've all heard about it I think you're going Supply pain right so it's more of the inbound Logistics the container stuck off the port of LA and trouble getting the containers off the vessels in through the domestic supply chain and that's really, kind of cast the context for the holiday and you know the headline in addition to the first Mile and the issues that retailers have been seeing is a pulling forward of holiday demand you know it's something that retailers have wished for four decades upon decades and this year it actually came to life I have a lot more to share on that you know I can keep on going but I can also pause as well to see if you have any. Follow up questions are just you know you can just fly me up I can tell you a little bit more of what we're seeing broadly in the holiday so far. Scot: [10:22] Yeah one of the theories was that you know the Press wasn't shy about the supply pain and consumers you know when my aunt ji is asking me about this stuff I was I know it's reached the zeitgeist. How do you say it pull it Forward are you talking like right even like before Halloween you saw unusual activity or like give us an idea of like how how much of the the oxygen move to the front of the balloon there. Rob: [10:47] Yeah yeah yeah well like that oxygen moved to the front of blue and I like that might have to borrow that Scott yeah so so what we saw is that. Real demand got pulled forward you know if you look at the first two weeks of November we saw an 18% year-over-year increase and that is significant last year we saw a bit, in October because Prime day if you remember got pulled into October and we had that halo effect so if you were named Amazon you were still you know getting some of that Halo of the demand and the buzz and the conditioning that happened but it really simmer down late October through. November until the week before cyberweek this year really you know again as I mentioned 18% year-over-year increase for the first two weeks of November you pull that out to the first three weeks in November we saw a 10% your of your increase so there actually was a pull forward and you know I want to. [11:48] Put this in context I mentioned retailers have been hoping and dreaming for this forever I call this discount chicken you might remember I reference this last year probably last couple years I've been on the show and this is this phenomena where retailers go into the holiday season with this amazing promotional calendar all the expertise all the data all the analysis and after the first week. They usually rip it up call an audible and they chased the discount and you know consumers have been conditioned to wait it out. Consumers typically win the game a discount chicken they wait until Black Friday they wait until Cyber Monday, for that last big deal and this year I have to say given what we've seen so far consumers aren't winning at that game. Retailers have really held their own on discounts and you combine that with like you mentioned the headlines that consumers were seeing around the supply chain and you know inflationary concerns as well and they were actually buying early and that did have an impact by the way spoil alert on cyberweek all you know all in. Jason: [13:06] Awesome will you open the door so let's dive in there so first of all you you call it cyberweek and so what what is that weak to you does that start Thursday Friday when does it. Marker 01 Rob: [13:17] Yeah good call so yeah we look at cyberweek from the Tuesday before American Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday it's the way we've been, reporting on it for the last bunch of years than just for like for like now analysis we've kept that I know there's the turkey five and the Cyber five that certainly are looked at for benchmarks and you know partly why we do that is we started to see early on a smoothing out of demand not just through the course of November as I just referenced before but over the course of the week and we wanted to represent that in a more holistic way so you know the short answer to your question we look at it from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving all the way through Cyber Monday. Jason: [14:01] Perfect and fun fact for our listeners Thanksgiving is obviously a North American holiday but Black Friday and cyber week our Global phenomenon which is interesting the holiday is not Global but the shopping is so how did cyberweek play out we're recording this a day after cyberweek so we're we up from. 20/20 and I'd also love to know how he did versus 2019. Rob: [14:24] Yeah absolutely so we wore up so for the course of cyberweek we were up four percent year-over-year and that represents about sixty two billion dollars with the be of digital revenue and you know you look at that number and you say wow that's kind of you know muted it's kind of leveling off and I can't lie it is because we saw such a significant Spike to your point from 2019 to 2020 so there's a whole new Baseline that's been set but to really replicate that seismic growth that we saw last year with non-essential retail closed people really focused on their health and their safety also looking at dealing with retailers that provided convenience and Trust. I see four percent year-over-year as as good as you know a retailer should hope right again because retailers should have seen brand should have seen that pulling forward of demand earlier in the season. Jason: [15:28] Yeah and then can you and part of it is last year was a monster year for digital so like do you do you have your like do you do it a two-year year-over-year or do you remember what the growth was last year for cyberweek just for frame for comparison. Rob: [15:44] You know I don't have that exact number in front of you what I can say for the holiday so November December was 50% year-over-year growth so you know you got to imagine suck cyberweek was way up there I could tell you that Force four. Black Friday in the u.s. because those are u.s. numbers just to remind you to sixty two billion at the four percent year-over-year we saw 20 percent growth. On Black Friday so that gives you a sense of what you saw throughout the year a lot of the growth last year actually came the week before. Cyberweek and in large part because the two of you everybody saw a ship again in like everybody right it made the Today Show. Large part really in the growth the for cyberweek last year we saw something like eighty percent year-over-year growth for the week before. Cyberweek because consumer saw the headline you know I was asked by a customer just recently in the specialty apparel space. Who worked for the wholesale division asking will this year. Consumers understand the issues that are happening in the inbound supply chain unlike last year where ship again was front and center I mean we all felt the Bermuda Triangle of packages being you know delayed significantly so as a consumer. [17:07] That kind of triggered you to think hey maybe I should buy early to make sure I get the product and also by the way maybe I should buy online and pick up in store so I know I can actually. Pick it up because it's more black a smile under my control. [17:22] That's my long way saying once again we saw growth last year in large part 3 cyberweek Black Friday we saw twenty percent so this 4% bringing it back today. Around cyberweek was you know leveling off from prior years but was on such a significant or based on such a significant New Normal that we really hit last year and by the way we don't see the snapping back to what we saw before the pandemic. Jason: [17:51] Yeah and I think that's a mistake people make and in their head when they're looking at growth rates they see this year's 4% is smaller than last year's twenty to thirty percent and they say oh gosh digital shrinking and no it's growing off a huge number from last year it just growing in a smaller slower rate than it than it did last year. Rob: [18:13] Exactly and by the way people are getting back into the store right especially for those not essential retail we're experiencing something and they want to go talk to a knowledgeable store associate and want to touch and feel the product you know they actually want to see friends out in a mall believe it or not and so there's you know. A rising tide here that's really lifting both digital and physical so you can't kind of look at one without the other I don't think there's a cannibalization happening per se because you're still seeing growth but you can't forget what's happening in-store this holiday. Jason: [18:48] Yeah it's super interesting and inside just to highlight like macro Trend that you're sort of underscoring here so this year cyberweek grew around 4% but holiday digital is growing in like ten percent so I'm gonna I'm gonna do risky public math that sounds like the holiday spike is kind of flattening out and holidays becoming more about that hole. Um cyber November if you will instead of instead of cyberweek is that do I have that right. Rob: [19:21] You got it spot-on Jason you know just throwing some more numbers at you because I know you love them but I know there's a lot is that for November and you hit it by the way you said 10% we saw based on a nine percent year-over-year growth across, the month of November and so in the US that represents 136 billion dollars of online sales so there is this smoothing out there is this flattening I'm not ready to put the nail in the coffin for Cyber Monday and Black Friday just you know consumers are just so condition to shop on those days but retailers can't ignore the fact that you know these spikes are still relevant but there is this smoothing out that started even before this year and we saw even more pronounced this year. Jason: [20:16] Yeah I was talking to a very big client and they were talking about how early in his career they used to celebrate this anomaly where the wear like during cyberweek they would have their. There billion dollar day in total retail sales and this year every day in November is a billion dollars for them. Yeah. So I am still curious even though it does seem like it's slightly less relevant it still is a super interesting novel to me novelty to me can you break down. The key days within cyberweek like I'm always interested in. E-commerce sales on Black Friday versus Cyber Monday and whether you know with the Advent of the smartphone are we selling more stuff at the Thanksgiving table on Thursday what sort of Trends did you see across the week. Rob: [21:11] Yeah I love it that's awesome yeah so let's dive into that you know a couple of things here you know Cyber Monday we saw a three percent year-over-year growth representing eleven point three billion and digital sales on Black Friday we saw five percent year-over-year growth which represented thirteen point four million and online sales and so we saw. [21:38] And this isn't the first year on this it's happening over the course of the last three or four maybe even five years. That Black Friday is a bigger digital sales day van Cyber Monday let me say that again Black Friday according to our data is a bigger digital sales day and Cyber Monday a lot of that you hinted at it Jason is that Cyber Monday you all know this was really. Coming to bear from our friends at the national retail Federation. To coin a term to signify people getting back into their office when the internet was not so great at home so they can get high-speed connectivity and Shop but now. We're all connected right we're all connected all the time and so in fact over the course of cyberweek 61%. Of borders and close to eighty percent of traffic was on a mobile device by the way that's phone. To be specific that doesn't include your tablets. And so there is this moving out partly because of connectivity what we saw in Thanksgiving for the last couple of years is a growing. [22:56] Disproportionately growth I'll say over Thanksgiving because you kind of. Finish your meal you're done with your crazy uncle Lou and you want to sit on the couch a little bit you can press and you pull out your phone and you know shopping generally and especially over the holiday is you know totally embedded and fragmented now you often get inspired by what you see on your phone. When you start shopping what we saw this Thanksgiving actually was. There was a little bit of leveling off we feel like people were more present last year I know I didn't have Thanksgiving and the one or two times over the holiday we did get together last year was underneath our patio heater we probably one of the last people in the country to get one and our fire pit and people want to be present this year and so. It wasn't as strong what I thought was interesting is two more points I'll make is. [23:55] Saturday Sunday we're pretty strong and those are generally pretty light days but this year people are online and people were buying so. You know I'll pause there probably a lot more to talk about but certainly again you see these Peaks happening with Cyber Monday with Black Friday in particular Black Friday where I should say one more thanks I'm just thinking about it is you know obviously Black Friday digitally was really large because more stores were closed and even if they were open people still felt more comfortable buying online. Jason: [24:29] Yeah just just to sort of echo that point Walmart told me that in 2019 they sold a billion dollars worth of turkeys on Thanksgiving and this year they sold 10 billion dollars worth of turkeys. So like a twenty percent jump in in American turkey consumption so that. Rob: [24:50] That's crazy that's amazing. Jason: [24:51] Yeah so sir clearly indicating that people were excited and did get back together so I almost wondered if that was gonna put a damper on the online shopping but it seems like it really didn't. Rob: [25:03] Not across the entire cyberweek it was still again I I'll risk even say healthy but probably closer to moderate growth is what I've been talking to our customers about but again that growth. I'm really or moderate growth is because of the earlier demand which retailers that's what they wanted that's what they got they should be smiling and be happy. Scot: [25:27] Very cool so just for the record Black Friday bigger than Cyber Monday for the first time that's pretty I think it's worth saying again. Rob: [25:36] Yeah it is it's kind of interesting because you know Black Friday think about is such a physical store holiday right and. It's really smooth it out and I know I've used that word before but it's really the theme for this holiday, and I think we'll see how I think it is a sign of things to come by the way I don't think this is now an anomaly but rather. How we're going to view the holiday season moving forward finally it didn't really by the way pull as forward as I would have suspected into October we saw some blips here and they're based on. The promotional calendar but it really started in Earnest on November first. Scot: [26:16] Yeah as a pure play e-commerce guy I'm glad we kind of overtook Black Friday and so yeah the so now that now that we're through these key days does it change your forecast up down or you feel like it's kind of right in line with what you guys were expecting. Rob: [26:34] Yeah we were expecting 10 percent growth over the course of the holiday in the u.s. and 7% growth. Globally we're sticking to that right now we're about just shy of 50 percent of All Digital sales in the books for this holiday. But we still have a way to go and in fact fun fact I guess that wasn't the exact questions got you ask but I'll grow it out there is about one-third of All Digital sales happen in November and December. So yeah we expect there are still a lot of sales to be had out there and we are anticipating similar results and so we're staying Pat on our our ten percent growth year over year across the entire holiday season for digital. Scot: [27:22] Wrinkle any indications of the data so far if you mentioned kind of that first mile any indications of other than it pulling forward that it's you know that it's causing any kind of problems like increased stock outs or we've had this first wave and you're worried there won't be anything on the shelves at the back end or what do you see in there. Rob: [27:43] We do see some concern with that you know I've been cautioning anybody I've talked to so I'll say here now is if you see something you like buy it don't wait for that last big discount we can talk about discounts in a little bit if you like but you're not going to necessarily get it in the product might not even be there what retailers have done based on our data is pull back on their assortment and so what we saw is. First cyberweek in the u.s. we saw a shrinkage of 6% of product catalogs so retailers are being conservative. They're selling what they know or hope is available but there is a concern as we go into these last couple of. Weeks of the holiday as The Last Mile and shipping cut off window starts to creep up what it will look like for those replenishable items if they actually will be replenishable but we thought was super interesting as I just mentioned is retailers were really being conservative and trying to do you know going deeper in there. [28:55] Inventory rather than going broader in their assortment and that's evident by what we saw in cyberweek with a six percent decrease in the product catalog where is generally speaking for cyberweek you're seeing you know anywhere from a five to ten and some cases of fifteen percent increase in that product catalog. Scot: [29:14] Nursing and then let's flip to the other side last year we had ship again in the indications there that that the shipping infrastructure was having problems keeping up. Rob: [29:26] You know we're feeling a lot Rosier than we did last year certainly you hit it on the head with chip again and we. [29:35] We anticipate in Saab 700 million packages at risk and those in most cases were delayed that was pulled back tremendously this year retailers really moved over the course of the last 20 months from Scrappy standing up some pretty Innovative but Scrappy nonetheless solutions for Last Mile and they've really worked to scale that and to not only do it effectively but efficiently efficiently meaning don't crush their margins by trying to get the product to the consumer buy online pick up in store still seems to be the winner, this holiday so those that put it in place over the course of the pandemic are actually seeing. Some really nice benefits from it one interesting fact that the team was able to gather was for those, retailers on Black Friday that offered buy online pick up in store so orders placed with the confidence at home and being able to picked up in and around the store grew at a 50% higher rate than those that didn't so consumers think about it over the course of the pandemic really showed loyalty retailers who are able to provide health safety convenience and Trust to the denominator there is removing the friction from the shopping process and those that offer that service were really. [31:04] Able to leverage and benefit from that in the new consumer Baseline of removing the friction. Jason: [31:12] Yeah you know it's an interesting thing on the last mile. Last year Amazon passed FedEx in terms of the number amount of packages they delivered themselves right in there. Depending how you count something like 30 to 40 percent of all e-commerce the middle news this week one of the supply chain guys that he expects by the end of this year or the first quarter of next year that they'll not only will they ship more packages than FedEx they'll ship more packages than UPS so Amazon could be the large the largest non-governmental last Last Mile in the in the country by next year. Rob: [31:50] Yeah you mean it's quite amazing how large Amazon has gotten with Last Mile and I give credit to anybody who isn't last excuse me who isn't Amazon. And who is in a big box retailer who has you know some capital of fro at The Last Mile Challenge and you know those that partnered with these you know collaborative networks to be able to. [32:16] Outsource if you will the the last mile or even provide buy online pick up in store to you know Outsource The Last Mile to the consumers have really benefited and you know where we saw unfortunate gap between the large players and the neighborhood and local players they somewhat of leveling the playing field. [32:39] Will be leveraging the stores not only for a filament Center but an experiential Center as well and I know I'm shifting a little bit but it's something that comes to mind Jason Scott is you know our research showed coming into this holiday. Those retailers that leverage their store for more than just scanning and bagging will benefit in fact 60% of. Online orders will be influenced by the physical store let me say it again 60% of digital will be influenced by the store which is somewhat the opposite that for store really came at us with five ten years ago about digital orders. Influencing store orders and you know that could be whether the store is generating demand or fulfilling demand and that could be from fulfillment or store associates being social media managers or you know even Service agents whether they're in the store or they're picking up micro shifts at home and then certainly obviously pick packing and shipping and getting the products ready to either be picked up or Filled from there so I know that was a little bit of a tangent to say you know most don't have the scale of an Amazon and so you got to get really crafty and Innovative of how you're going to kind of level the playing field particularly around Last Mile. Jason: [34:07] Yeah no totally agree and it's actually if you have too much free time on your hands it's really fun to read all these retailer Q3 earnings reports because like they often embedded in the back of that they do talk about like the percentage of their sales that are fulfilled by store influence from store and that that's a standout stat for almost every retailer now is how important that store is for the digital supply chain so that's that exactly mirrors your data I want to like there's so much going on this holiday I feel like we could we could do a two-hour show which we won't do to our listeners but another interesting one is pricing promotion and inflation and how all that pays out like it was a lot of the growth from this year in your guys estimation was it. Inflation and consumers just paying more for less or or was it. Rob: [35:00] Yeah yeah we got the data and it's it's fascinating it is really it's you know it's fascinating on one hand but it's like pretty basic on the other which is a lot of the growth was driven by increase prices and so what we saw for instance over cyberweek the average selling price was up 11%. In the US and 5% globally what we also saw at the same time is that order volume was lower, and average order value was higher so the math says, that people are buying fewer items at fewer retailers because they have kind of a zero-sum game you know they have a specific budget and so if you're buying things at higher prices you're buying less of those things and you could equate the 11%. [36:00] Increase of average selling price to inflation and we're seeing that across the board meeting across the different product categories so you know. That's happening we predicted that for the second half of the Year retailers and brands. We're going to have an incremental 223 billion dollars of cost of goods sold and that's from manufacturing supply chain labor they absorbed a good amount of it but. They had to pass some on to the consumers consumers they're happy they're positive. They want to focus on buying things that they want versus just needs. [36:40] So they bought now what retailers did to the discount piece of this and why consumers are likely to lose out on discount chicken this year is discounts were the lowest levels and we've seen. Andres when I say that discount rates where some of the lowest we've seen in recent history and so the discount and the rates being lower I think it's something like eight percent. Down your view here in the u.s. is because you know retailers. Just had to hold their own right and really protect some of the margin and you know even on Cyber Monday where you see some of the biggest discounts it just wasn't happening this year. Jason: [37:28] Yeah interesting you know you talked about consumers picking fewer retailers and buying being a few items for more money I wonder to me that sounds like it's a recipe for sort of retail, I hate using this word because Steve Dennis will get all excited bifurcation that you know if consumers are buying less items than their first choice retailer is likely to win and they're you know kind of longer tail retailers are likely to lose those that are using that at all or do you think that's how it's going to play out this year. Rob: [38:02] Yeah I do just plainly you know loyalty has been redefined we don't mention it before in terms of health safety, convenience and Trust now that's the Baseline and retailers really need to focus you know what we're hearing from consumers they want to be treated special they want to E M I don't know what personalization means but when you ask them the attributes of it they want that right they want to feel like they're unique two-thirds say they want to, have a unique experience and feel like they're being treated uniquely the challenge based on Research that we just conducted is only one-third of retailers can actually harness and democratize that data and turn it into personalized promotions and prices and offers and so. Yeah there's this will give a shout out to Steve face Steve happy holidays there is this bifurcation taking place and it's you know so important especially as we go into this cooking this world for retailers to really harness their data more than they ever have it's not, a new story right we've been talking about for a while but this first part is zero party data so important because that same research showed three strikes and you're out after three bad experiences retail with a retailer or brand consumer is going to abandon and go somewhere else and not come back so yeah just I think you're onto something this and I need to really not just a choir but think about the consumers that you have those loyal shoppers. Jason: [39:31] Yeah if only there was some kind of tool set that merged I Commerce and data and it all lived like I don't know in the cloud that would be amazing. Rob: [39:39] It would be kind of amazing woman that I know I think we're in a pretty good spot. Jason: [39:43] Someone should do that. Another thing that's been interesting to me regarding the inflation is it seems like some retailers are. Passing more of the the costs on to Consumers than others and it's been funny I don't know if you followed all these all these Q3 earnings but there's retailers that are like. We pulled a lot of levers we got a lot of extra inventory in but it came in way more expensive we didn't raise our prices a lot and so our sales have been great but our profitability is down and then there have been other retailers that are like, consumers have been willing to pay more for a good so our sales are up in our profitability is up. Side note I don't I don't follow this is much but the investors like the retailers that took the prophet a lot more than the retailers that acted as a shock absorber. Rob: [40:31] Shocker yeah I think generally that equation that you just talked about not only sales but profit come back into play here retailers and of what I've seen I've gotten somewhat of a hall pass over the course of the pandemic because you know the focus on. Consumer safety. Associate safety getting the product through the supply chain and so the Retailer's took a hit there I think we're taking you know a. Refocus you know back on to profitability and you know that's why it's interesting I was hosting a Roundtable virtually just recently and one of the participants one of the executives reminded all of us is of the profitability of the box right we kind of lost sight up that'll is what I mean by that obviously the physical store. And I think we lost sight of that purposely over the course of last 20 months but. And I think we're going to have to really hunker down and really look at what that looks like especially as you know consumers have gotten used to having a lot of flexibility and choice around how they get in where they get the product. Scot: [41:44] Cool and interesting data from the categories apparel has been under a lot of pressure since the pandemic Electronics have been surging Home Improvement seems to be running non-stop it anything any changes to those kind of Trends we've seen for the last 18 months. Rob: [42:02] Yeah you know I'll look I'll give you some information and across cyberweek. Because it's most recent but I think it speaks to what's happening Scott or what has happened over the last 20 months. Um what we saw in the hottest categories across cyberweek are luxury handbags with a sixty percent year-over-year growth. Furniture at a 56 percent year over year growth. In general Footwear at a 22 percent year-over-year growth now luxury handbags in general apparel I get it. That's going off of a base that shrunk last year nobody saw my feet on any zooms right so my slippers were just fine legs are handbags. I know we weren't really going out to many restaurants in SLE need to refresh that so the growth on Lower base or. Shrinking base from last year makes sense for getting back out in the world you know we're focusing on exponential categories as consumers like entertainment and travel and being outdoors. [43:11] What really is super interesting is furniture. Furniture has been on a tear because we've all been home and whether we're redoing our outdoor patio set because that's where we're spending time outdoors I did for the holiday as I mentioned or it's my home office. You know what I can think about as my team look through the data is it's a shifting slightly of what people are buying for their home they're buying more entertainment type of products whether it's home appliances or its couches. Or the like where people are coming back into your home after a long respite and we want to spruce up our home as well so you know like I said the handbags from where I get it which is great to see Furniture you know ears. Really didn't know walls over the course of the pandemic and as we come through this holiday. Scot: [44:07] Nursing how about any interesting toys you want to highlight like I think Jason mentioned the mixy as one that was kind of called out as being a hot toy. Rob: [44:16] Jason what's the Mixie tell me more. Jason: [44:20] You are I don't I actually haven't seen any data on whether it came to fruition but the toy it was the toy the toy industry was leaning into and it's like it's like a combination of a chemistry toy with a plushie so like like it create smoke and then a plushie comes out of the smoke I think is the the gist of it the the big toy I've seen in terms of sales velocity is that the gaming platforms are selling like hotcakes. Rob: [44:51] Yeah yeah yeah that's what I was saying it's really just a sample size of one where it's like for my boys 15 and 12 they're all about whatever's digital whether that's devices or Dean's on those devices so you know shopping is gotten a little easier on one hand but we have to also be really creative as well. Jason: [45:12] Yeah I wonder we'll see how it plays out but it doesn't feel like Last Mile has had a big impact on on shopping up till now but like even if give last-mile holds up in there's no capacity problems we still have these holiday cut-offs right you know we still get to this date where we can no longer cost-effectively ship something to your home in time for the holidays and I feel like there's more digital gifts out there than ever before so you think of all the streaming services you can gift a subscription to all the content for these these gaming Platforms in these Computing platforms and I'm not super Bush for this holiday but like I think we're going to see more retailers offering enough teas and things this year so it I'm kind of curious if the back half of. December becomes the sort of digital holiday season. Rob: [46:01] Yeah we certainly saw that didn't we Jason last year in terms of the shipping cut off. Come in really early on the heels of Cyber Monday because the last mile issues and a lot of retailers really honed in on gift cards as another source of. A gift and I think you're right I think you're right in terms of you know whether it's and FTS maybe we're a little early for that but we'll see. My colleague Michelle Grant has been tracking that really closely and she's pretty bullish about the whole category as relates not only gifts but the intersection between that and loyalty programs but yeah I mean I think it's you know whether it's gift cards to restaurants or travel or the like gaming as you mentioned just I think there's something that I really think there's something to that. Jason: [46:50] Yeah well listen this has been a super exciting conversation and I always like to end it on a total Debbie Downer note so the. I'm curious if you have seen or have you guys are trying to figure out how you're going to model like any impact from the new covid variant like in my world it feels like people were definitely planning to get together and more in person events but it does seem like people are starting to second-guess those there's all the news articles are talking about what what's the correct pronunciation is it Omicron. Makan. Rob: [47:27] Sounds good to me I'll let you stick to that one I will try to because I know all. Jason: [47:31] Got you I think a Peyton Manning screaming Omaha is my. Rob: [47:34] Hahaha I like that reference nicely done yeah. That's a good question I as I mentioned earlier I only hope we can see each other in person at an arrest in January you know where. We're at Salesforce tracking just. [47:53] Now this new digital world really closely because we're not going back to the same. You know mindset as we had before as our newly assigned co-ceo put it is work isn't where you go but it's what you do and you know we're living in this digital headquarters and it's going to be hybrid I've. Attended plenty of hybrid types of executive meetings over the course of the last month or two as people start, get back on the road as it relates to retail you know I can't really speak to what's to come. But what I can say is we tracked digital sales across the last 20 months as it relates to cases and maybe it shouldn't be a surprise you know as. Non-essential. Stores closed and I hope that doesn't happen again but people want to hunker down and be home and order products online there was a direct correlation between cases and order and sales growth in fact over the course of 2020 we saw a 50% year-over-year growth. And by the way that was I'm sorry 57% to be precise and that was driven in large part by 40% growth in net new digital Shoppers so these are people would hang on a line right they go to social media they be able to browse and. [49:22] Do some research but they ultimately go in the store and buy they're also buying new categories as well and so you know as things. As we look forward we can certainly based on history see a correlation between digital which is set a whole new Baseline as I mentioned before and what that looks like as it relates to traffic orders and sales. Jason: [49:47] Yeah it is certain there is no short – of variables to impact this holiday as it feels like we've gone from playing checkers to playing 3D 3D chess a little bit with all this stuff. Rob: [50:02] Yes you're right I need to bring in my 15-year old to help me play that game because yeah I'm a couple moves behind but you know we can look at data and that's the fun part about our part of the fun part about my job as looking at the data and seeing what people have done. Jason: [50:17] I I do other and that's why we love having you on the show so much is because you bring the data in Rob that is going to be a perfect place to wrap for tonight because we have used up all our a lot of time on this special cyberweek / Hanukkah edition of the show so if you if listeners enjoyed this show we sure would appreciate it as our holiday gift if you would jump onto iTunes and give us that five-star review. Scot: [50:45] Rob we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us here on the day after Cyber Monday you guys have a fancy cool new portal or I don't know what you want to HUB how do folks find that. Rob: [50:59] We do have the insights hub for the holiday and so perhaps we can in the show notes or however you do it these days share it with the crew but if you also searched Salesforce holiday insights Hub you'll get right to it so you'll see all the data that I talked about and even more across marketing as we get further into the holiday season you'll see it for service as well and so I encourage your listeners to engage through that portal and you know Scott Jason thank you so much sincerely I mean it's been a long week not a lot of sleep for the team and me but. It's been a highlight to share this with you and make this an annual tradition so happy healthy and safe holiday season. Scot: [51:46] Thanks Rob will have Jason put a link to the hub on his friend stir page. Rob: [51:52] Perfect. Jason: [51:55] I will do it I will put it in all the socials and if folks want to keep track of the gar fees that's its retail Rod right is it retail Rob Garf is that your Twitter handle. Rob: [52:07] You got it retail Rob Garth and then I'm on LinkedIn as well. Jason: [52:10] Awesome I will put links to all of the above Rob really appreciate it one of the conversations I look forward to every year and absolutely look forward to seeing you in person at the interrupt Big Show next month and until then happy commercing!

Guest: Dr Jaco Deacon | CEO at Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Christa shares Clark Stinks posts with Clark. Submit yours at Clark.com/ClarkStinks. / The big box retailers are better stocked for Christmas than anticipated. Inventory and sales are up. Clark lets you know what's a deal and what's not right now. The market never stops changing - how to be flexible in a time of rising prices. Clark Stinks and Ask Clark topics include: Costco membership deal: Save up to $30 with a new Costco membership / Best Cell Phone Plans and Deals in 2021 / Mean Reversion Definition - Investopedia / IRS Announces 401(k) Contribution Limit Increase for 2022 Want more money advice? Sign up for Clark's free daily newsletter! Free Advice: Clark's Consumer Action Center Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Prior to self-storage full-time, Zach worked in various management roles at a Fortune 50 Retailer and Fortune 500 Staffing and Recruiting Firm. Zach owns and operates self-storage across the midwest (Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma currently).   [00:01 - 03:31] Opening Segment Get to know Zach Quick Nine Years in Real Estate   [03:32 - 10:03] Switching to Self Storage from Apartments Zach's Advantage Before the Curve Why storage's biggest enemy is storage When is an area oversupplied and undersupplied? In what market is Zach looking? A Three-Mile Radius Business Zach talks about using new technology   [10:04 - 21:56] The Secret Recipe for Self-Storage Success  Where are People Finding Deals? Zach's Secret: A Plain Old Excel Spreadsheet This is How to Close a Deal Twofold: Zach's Big Real Estate Investing Lesson How Zach closes deals, finds money, and makes it happen The Time Zach Spends on His Investments The Future of Self-Storage   [21:57 - 30:19] Closing Segment Quick break for our sponsors Groundfloor offers short-term, high-yield real estate debt investments to the general public. Check www.passivewealthstrategy.com/groundfloor/ to get started. What is the best investment you've ever made other than your education? Marrying his wife and his first self-storage facility Zach's worst investment Residential What is the most important lesson that you've learned in business and investing? “It sounds so simple, but I've read the book Profit First and applied it to each property for storage.” Connect with my guest. See the links below.   Resources Mentioned: Profit First   Tweetable Quotes: “Storage, his biggest enemy is storage. ” - Zach Quick “It never happens if you don't try either.” - Zach Quick “Finding good people and then kind of laying out grid operations for them can make a huge difference in your stress levels and in your life. ” - Zach Quick ------------ Connect with Zach Quick through LinkedIn.  Visit their website https://www.zachquick.com/about.    Invest passively in multiple commercial real estate assets such as apartments, self storage, medical facilities, hotels and more through https://www.passivewealthstrategy.com/crowdstreet/ Participate directly in real estate investment loans on a fractional basis. Go to www.passivewealthstrategy.com/groundfloor/ and get ready to invest on your own terms.  LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to explode their business growth by sharing this episode or click here to listen to our previous episodes                   

With roles at Target, The Home Depot, Family Dollar and now Ulta Beauty, Kecia Steelman, Ulta Beauty chief operating officer, can legitimately affirm, “Retail is in my DNA." “Life has [come] full circle because I'm leading the Ulta Beauty at Target partnership,” said Steelman, who spearheaded the collaboration, on this week's Glossy Beauty Podcast. (Steelman worked at Target between 1993 and 2005 and has been at Ulta Beauty since 2015.) Ulta Beauty at Target, which launched in August and consists of a 1,000 square foot, Ulta Beauty expert-staffed shop-in-shops in Target, is set to reach 100 new shops by the end of this year. The curated assortment of 54 prestige beauty brands is one of the ways that Steelman has facilitated a more convenient shopping experience for Ulta Beauty's existing customers as well as create a new ecosystem of shoppers at Target, said Steelman. Additionally, Steelman has worked to expand Ulta Beauty's digital innovation with elevated curbside and same-day pickup capabilities last year. “We shifted to be focused on self-care, self-expression, and togetherness because that's what our guests needed from us at that time,” she said.

Nate Hall, owner of The Enchanted Floorist in Milwaukee, WI, returns for this weeks episode. He discusses how after being asked what he would charge a retail store to do some work by his wife, he actually calculated out what it cost him to do business. Realizing the going rate was going to keep him in the poor house, he made his own rates up and got retailers to agree to them. His rate sheet became a simple binding contract with the retailers. Listen in to see how he did it and how it changed the game for him.Need new headphones for working and listening to Floored-U-Cation? Check out ISOTunes using the link below. Amazing Bluetooth headphones that are OSHA certified. http://bit.ly/2P5A9pRCheck out our sponsorsThe Trade Labor Market PlaceTraffikDigitalFlooring DomainSnaptechSupport the show (http://www.patreon.com/flooracademy)

CPGs and retailers have always had strong ties. With consumer behavior shifts, more competition, and new technology tools, that relationship is evolving. In the center of the CPG-Retailer Relationship are AI and machine learning. Taking on this topic, Retail Refined host Melissa Gonzalez spoke with Ryan Powell, VP Retail Strategy and Consulting, at Insite AI.Insite AI offers a solution built on AI and customer relationships, enabling retailers and CPG brands to make the best decisions. Powell has a long history of working with CPGs on solving problems related to category management, forecasting, and revenue growth management.Powell explained his role, “I work with customers trying to rollout AI roadmaps and those trying to reach this next generation of technology and want to accelerate.”AI applies well to the CPG-retailer relationship because there's so much of it. Collecting is only the first part. Next must come analysis and then action. CPGs and retailers are still finding their way in applying AI and machine learning in a meaningful way, as they must first break foundational boundaries.One thing Powell is clear about is the fluctuating CPG-retailer relationship. Much of that is due to consumer behavior changes and the COVID effect. “There have been these mini-cycles of behavior that still aren't on steady ground, and that's shifting the relationships of retailers and CPGs.”Powell also spoke about the monetization of data and how CPGs can attain it in a more targeted way. “Monetization does often mean the data is cleaner, better, more structured, and richer. In an ideal world, the data supports retailers and CPGs playing together seamlessly to satisfy the customer.”Powell offered the example of Boston Beer Company. “They have multiple retail data sources and are drilling into specific categories then requesting that from retailers. It's very specific to a point where they can accurately predict what will happen efficiently.”

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**This episode is brought to you by MuteSix, StoreYa, and Justuno**   “Brands that are female-founded, natural, innovative, and have some sort of mission towards sustainability,” that's who Gather Brands aligns with. In part 2, Mia Medina, Founder and CEO of Gather Brands, continue with her advice. According to her, make sure you've got your pricing dialed down before launching, and whenever you raise funds, double it from what you think you need. Through her experience, she has learned a lot about what not to do. When getting into a retailer, be prepared, do your homework on the retailer and distributor and keep in mind that the sales cycle is a long process. Gather Brands works with startups as well as established brands. It's their goal to bring founders in front of buyers. In this episode, she talks about: * Her advice to brands; * Suggestions on expansion; * How brands should prepare; * Their brand preference; * Process; and * Her message to women founders. Join Ramon Vela and Mia Medina as they break down the inside story on The Story of a Brand. For more on Gather Brands, visit: https://gatherbrands.com/  Subscribe and Listen to the podcast on all major apps. Simply search for “The Story of a Brand.” Click here to listen on Apple Podcast or Spotify. * OUR SHOW IS MADE POSSIBLE WITH THE SUPPORT OF MUTESIX. MuteSix is the leading agency in performance marketing. They have been in this space for nearly eight years, growing and scaling the world's most recognizable e-commerce brands with breakthrough creative, targeted media buying, and data-driven results in every step of the funnel. They're currently offering listeners a FREE omnichannel marketing audit. Their team of auditors will perform a deep dive analysis into your current marketing efforts and identify which strategies might be budget wasters and which strategies will improve performance. The audit covers all digital marketing channels, including Facebook, Google, Email, Amazon, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, Influencer, Programmatic, and Website CRO. For your free digital marketing consultation, visit: https://mutesix.com/storyofabrand * This episode is also brought to you by StoreYa. If managing your ads drives you crazy, and you're all about automating your ecom business, then you have to give StoreYa a try! StoreYa will Launch, Optimize & Scale your ads on Google, Facebook & Instagram...WITHOUT YOU having to do ANYTHING Their powerful AI will optimize your campaigns 24/7, delivering the best ads to the right customers... They are a Google & Facebook Partner that supports over 400,000 merchants! To get started and enjoy a 33% discount for the first month, simply visit www.StoreYa.com/Story * This episode is also brought to you by Justuno. Worried about hitting your revenue goals this month? Make the most of your website traffic with Justuno - the #1 CRO tool for thriving e-commerce sites. Grow your email and SMS lists, show smart product recommendations to increase your average order value, improve return on ad spend, and so much more. Justuno helps you convert more website visitors into sales. Visit https://www.justuno.com/ramon/ for a free 14-day trial, one-click install on Shopify, and 15% off with the code RAMON.

Hive ransomware hits electronics retailer Media Markt. Robinhood Markets sustains a data breach it traces to social engineering. Ben Yelin looks at the law behind U.S. police demanding your phone passcode. Dave checks in with Rick Howard for his thoughts on the Trojan Source vulnerability. And more notes on the international action against REvil, including the US application of sanctions (with Baltic cooperation) to three companies involved in supporting the gang's financial infrastructure. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news briefing: https://www.thecyberwire.com/newsletters/daily-briefing/10/216

This week I Chop it up With Sanj Patel Of Sanj Smoke Shop As we talk about the Release of his SP10-14 cigar and his Industry Killa Cigar plus Cigar Culture --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/Cigartable/message

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EP279 - Amazon, EBay, Shopify Q3 Earnings  In Episode 257 we talked about IDFA and the impact of privacy and digital ads, and then on Episode 277 we talked about Supply chain pain (SupplyPain™). Now that we're in Q3 earnings season we're seeing those themes play out. This week we dive into the earnings calls from Snap, eBay, Shopify, and Amazon. We also discuss the Rent the Runway IPO. Episode 279 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday. October 28th, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:00] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 279 the Halloween edition being recorded on Thursday October 28 2021 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:18] Hey Jason happy Halloween. Jason: [0:21] Happy Halloween to you too Scott are you a big Halloween guy I kind of imagine you are. Scot: [0:26] Am I like to dress up but once my kids became teenagers that was suddenly not cool so I haven't been dressing up since probably for probably like the last few years so. If you dress up for your son enjoy it while you can. Jason: [0:42] Come over and spend it with us Steven is happy to be your dress up beard. Scot: [0:47] Yeah he would have a Darth Sidious outfit and work to the channel visor Christmas party and scared all the look it's so so I don't do that with five and under. Jason: [0:59] Yeah you probably weren't invited back to your own company's Halloween party. Scot: [1:03] Yeah well a lot of times the wives didn't know that I was so sorry. Jason: [1:06] Yeah but the other way to think about it is that it's Christmas in October both because retailers are desperately trying to pull holiday sales and but also because Apple finally release the new Macbook Pros that you and I have been waiting for. Scot: [1:20] Yeah yeah we had some Getty conversations about that you've got the new chips and yeah and you know the Apple, the Apple launch events have gotten kind of weirder and weirder with covid like now it's like you know Tim standing in a Tim Cook standing in a giant corn field then the the camera flies around like a crow and so so those have been kind of fun to watch just for the theatrics of they're going through. Jason: [1:47] Yeah yeah no the production like despite the fact that it's all pre-recorded and stuff and you know the the production value is pretty high I I'd like to see him go the other way it should be like Tim Cook in his pj's in his kitchen being like Oh and we invented a new chip. Scot: [2:02] I miss Johnny I've saying aluminium this my favor. Jason: [2:05] Yes and as you may know aluminium is dramatically more expensive than aluminum. Scot: [2:11] Yeah and chamfered edges. Jason: [2:13] Yeah all that's gone now it's just a chunk of aluminium but I'm excited to get mine I have a little jealousy because I feel like we both ordered early on launch day and I think yours already shipped is that true. Scot: [2:29] Yeah it's somewhere on a plane from Shanghai right now I hope according to the the tracking number we'll see. Jason: [2:36] Nice nice I will be excited for your unboxing and I half expected that when you jumped on the, the conference call to record this one that you'd be wearing like a Versace like jogging suit or something because my my Google Alerts have blown up this week because get spiffy is on fire. Scot: [2:56] Yeah yeah we had a big week it's few we announced our Series be fundraising so that was a lot of fun, I think I had a record LinkedIn post I think I had something like 300 comments and so those those good it's always. Yeah it's been a kind of a crazy 18 months for us and I can definitely commiserate with our retail folks that are going through harder times now we had those common being the pandemic but got through and. It's been crazy we've since March our business has grown like eighty percent so it's been like this crazy post covid-19, perfect storm for for Mobile Car Care Bears, you have no one can hire anybody but we've been able to kind of squeak that out and then no one can get new vehicles so they're running their vehicle Vehicles longer, they don't have anyone to take them to brick-and-mortar service centers they don't have mechanics to hire so they call us if so that's been it's been a lot more fun than this time last year. Jason: [3:54] That that is awesome I'm going to assume the one slight negative is you get some good news like that you get all those those post cooking on LinkedIn and I'm assuming, every vendor under the planet has I read your news and is now pitching you for something. Scot: [4:10] Yes yeah I try to forward them all to you because, there's a lot of Executive coaching out there available that you know maybe you could use a lot of video stories a lot of AI chatbots you know I don't know how on Earth we have, the world can sustain at least a thousand AI chatbots but there are a lot of those out there yeah when trick is someone told me, if you put an emoji in your name on LinkedIn the Bots pick it up or get confused by it so that that helps give me an automatic filter so if someone kind of uses that emoji when they're kind of like hey Scott and that you know they put the Emoji then you know that it's a bot so that I just delete. Jason: [4:54] Oh my God this episode of the podcast is now like officially worth it just for that that's a pro tip. Scot: [5:00] Life hacks yeah I'm here for LinkedIn life hacks that's my that's my speciality that and saying aluminum. Jason: [5:08] Those are all good skills but congratulations I know it's non-trivial ever to get people to have their trust in you and invest and then in this climate in particular I'm sure. It was a rigorous process. Scot: [5:25] Thanks thanks and we actually added the folks at Goodyear Ventures so shout out to them I think some of their e-commerce folks listen to the show so appreciate their support. Jason: [5:34] Nice A wise choice in podcast as well so any e-commerce stuff you follow this week. Scot: [5:42] Well it has been probably one of the more interesting weeks in the land of e-commerce for a while so listeners will remember that you know. We were recording this in October so this is always an interesting time to read what's going on in the Q3 results which kind of sets us up for Q4. So we always pay particular attention during this time of year. But if blisters remember back in March of this year you and I I would like to say and I think if we voted on this would be unanimous we're basically Clairvoyant Nostradamus level of predicting things. You and I both kind of felt like the industry wasn't taking this idea if a the Apple privacy changes coming to both iOS what is it 14.5 and then later 15 added some more. It didn't seem like anyone was taking that as seriously as you and I kind of felt like it was going to hit him so he did a really big deep dive on that that's one of our more popular episodes that's 257. And then into 77 you and I again being The Clairvoyant Wonders that we are we started talking about the supply chain being way worse than folks thought it were in coined Supply pain. So we are now starting to see those two things Collide in really interesting ways that I don't. [7:02] You know I think our guesses that those would be bigger than people thought on it came true so let's walk through what that. The first one was Snapchat so they we don't usually cover them on the show but I think it kind of sets the tone here they started off their earning Seasons last week Thursday on the 21st, and they just totally whiffed on their expectations and I thought it would read this little segment from from one of the Wall Street. [7:30] Analyst. While snap was clear that changes have not impacted the efficacy of their advertising iOS 14.5 is limiting direct response advertisers ability to measure and optimize campaigns on Snapchat. Leading to reduce spending on the platform specifically the update was pushed to users in July blah blah blah blah and it restricts the advertisers ability to use their measurement tools. So basically used to be able to measure what was going on in Snapchat and you know and because it's in an app and that's largely the use cases inside of the app for advertisers they have no idea. Traffic is converting or not so that's not good especially, you know and then advertisers are into buckets you know this but just for listeners there's brand advertisers were just kind of top of the funnel building awareness in just really trying to be seen and what not, and then there's more direct response where you're really trying to measure you know I'm selling in Snapchat Maps I'm a convenience store and I want people to come in and get a slice of, and I'm measuring that conversion that just went away so that big segment of advertisers is very upset. And what Apple did is they offered this alternative I don't know the right way to say this but it's their own ad that work how do you how do you say. [8:47] Gad Network Scott ad Network I don't know I'm going to call it apples ad network but that's not the official name. So Apple said okay don't worry everyone we're going to do this privacy thing over here but we're going to give you these little tool sets so that your advertisers can see what's going on. Well those things really stink worse than anyone I ever imagined because you know they. Because they're super anonymised you have to have you have to be at this really big scale so if you're kind of a micro let's say you're not 7-Eleven your Joe's convenience store, well in Des Moines Iowa well you're never going to have enough data in there to give you anything so so it doesn't work for this vast segments of advertisers I think everyone was surprised by that, then if it does work the reporting is delayed as much as 72 hours so it's like what happened last Thursday kind of thing, so it's just a total train wreck and then on top of that to kind of pile on, snap said in addition a bunch of their brand advertisers turned off because, they just don't have any products they can sell because of the supply chain problems so so it was a double whammy for snap and the stock Plum old plummeted like, 10% the first day and has continued to slide and so it's down 20 percent as of now so that was that got everyone really squirrelly and spooked out. [10:16] What is your take on the Snapchat side. Jason: [10:18] Yeah no I mean you I think you covered it really well like in general there has been a trend where more ad dollars are shifting to more of those direct response ads so the fact that like that's the. [10:31] The side of advertising that got diminished was like extra severe because you know people were generally trying to spend more money at the bottom of the funnel than, then they had in the past these digital, platforms and especially after Google and Facebook they the bulk of their advertisers are the long tail Advertiser so they tend to be smaller people that are more impacted by these sort of like cohort models that, the Apple and Google are trying to use, um and I would just say like there is a funny thing here like the attribution always sucked and it best it's this last click attribution someone saw your ad clicked on it and then bought the thing. And so therefore your ad was worthwhile you never will know if you would have sold the thing, without that add right and they may very well have like type your name into a platform that then showed your ad right above your organic listing and. You know the the ad kind of stole the click right so. So you know there always is this dirty little secret that like attribution is not the same as incrementality. And you know now like these advertisers that used to be able to justify their spend are having a harder time because of these numbers but the other thing is mucking up is about 73% of all these digital ads are programmatically bought so. [11:56] Computer program buys it and guess what the most important impart inputs are for that programmatic algorithm its, those those ads success metrics so the fact that is delayed 72 hours it's not just an inconvenience that you know someone buying an ad isn't going to see a report for a couple days, it means you can't do this real-time bidding based on like you know hitting particular row as goals and things like that with your at so, it is a mess I would just say you know snap and Facebook you know used to be a huge competitive advantage that the bulk of their user base was in this mobile app and you know the fact that everything happened in the app was a huge benefit and now it's. It's unfortunately for them sort of biting them in the in the butt. Scot: [12:40] So so that got Wall Street very much awake about this issue and many of the reports were like we just don't know how bad Q4 is going to be because, you know iOS 15 is now out and it increasingly has turned the crank on privacy this one is really more around the efficacy of email marketing, but if you're if you're a brand you have you know and used to do a ton of direct response advertising and snap and, you know you're doing a bunch of email marketing you've just had two legs of the stool kind of taken out from underneath him so. This got Wall Street very worried a lot of the stocks kind of reacted and then that was kind of the set up this week so then we hit Monday of this week, and Facebook was next up and everyone was like losing their mind because if you think about Snapchat is largely used through the app on phones same is similarly true Facebook at least has some desktop traffic. But I believe snap doesn't have any it's just an app yeah it's got to be snap. [13:41] Sermons like okay this is going to be bad but how bad so Facebook came out and they miss their consensus numbers but they were in range with what they had kind of guided to so I wear a snap kind of thing just totally blew up everything. And then they also kind of lowered going into the fourth quarter and so there was kind of a little bit of collective sigh of relief that was like who that wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. [14:08] And they kind of said oh yeah and also we're going to change our name so everyone's like what, okay but then they did they didn't change their name at that particular time so that was kind of weird, so everyone is kind of like what is this and you know they are obsessed with this idea of the metaverse we should probably do a deep dive on this at some point but this this idea that, you know you'll kind of be able to go in and out of the seamless 3D World either with augmented reality or virtual reality and, Jason I love to talk about this future things but don't have time to get into it here, so everyone was like okay that wasn't so bad and then on Wednesday both eBay and Google announced Google surprise to the upside and, you know I believe this is because they are they own a phone platform they own a browser, so in this new world of third-party data kind of going away they're in a pretty good position because they have a lot of first-party data. Now they do have some exposure you know especially through like their ad networks and stuff but they were able to mitigate that through the bulk of their other activities. [15:18] So so that was interesting and then reading that report one thing they actually called out was that they one of the segments that was stronger than anticipated was the kind of called it e-commerce and that encapsulates. The traditional Google shopping that most merchants and brand folks will know, but then they talked about how they're having their starting to see a fair amount of success on YouTube and it wasn't clear to me I was going to ask you it wasn't clear to me what exactly they were talking about their they didn't they didn't elaborate, no is it live streaming is it some product, I think you can send a feed into YouTube now and how things bought through there so I wanted to pick your brain on that Google aspect of. Jason: [16:01] Yeah no it is getting a lot of traction and it's a there's a family of AD products on YouTube called YouTube shoppable ads and it. It's less about live streaming there's a tiny little bit of it on YouTube that's why I've streaming but it's it's being able to embed clickable links in video streams and then add pre-rolls for other people's video streams, the let you endemically buy a product and so the and the. You know the the amount of volume on those kind of add products versus like a product listing add on Google searches lower, um but the efficacy is much higher and the growth rate is is much higher so people are consuming a ton of minutes of a video on the YouTube platforms and you know now we're starting to see. Tangible examples of being able to convert those audiences into buyers so that's that's kind of interesting but it's less live streaming and more. Sort of you know embedded links in the video that that either do an endemic check out on YouTube or send you to a Retailer's e-commerce site. Scot: [17:15] Yeah yeah I definitely want to dig into that maybe we could do a deep dive on another show and kind of look at some of these cases I think it's interesting so then everyone was like holy cow this is this is awesome Google did great and then eBay announced and their their results are kind of what I would call, Punk they're just kind of like yeah you know they they weren't terrible like Snapchat and one of the nursing things is Snapchat set the bar so low that people missing consensus kind of was like, almost like a hooray it was a really weird setup I've never seen anything quite like it so it's kind of an interesting result there, so you know being being not terrible as kind of the new win oddly enough, so there gmv was down 12 percent year over year because of these tough comps, and you have a picture maybe we can talk about where you know you see this mountain last year of, do the pandemic and now women's comping against that mountain and a lot of folks especially, Pure Play anyone Pure Play retail they're not able to compliments that they're coming down their growth has slowed below to kind of where that mountain of growth was last year and eBay has fallen into that trap. [18:26] They did spend a lot of time on the call and I thought this was, Clairvoyant of you that kept talking about comping against 2019 so kind of a two year ago comp because that takes the pandemic out and makes you look better when you take that big mountain of a year Outlast in kind of in the sandwich of, the 2019 in the 2021 and when you do that they were up 9 percent so they felt like that was kind of when I don't know about that. Jason: [18:51] Yeah if you do a word cloud of all the the earnings calls this quarter two years ago will be the biggest phrase on the word cloud. Scot: [19:02] So then today was interesting because the setup was and I don't think this is ever lined up like this so in the morning we had Shopify and then in the evening we had Amazon, and when you when you when you're a public company you have to you can't you can't announce earnings while the markets open most people historically have done, you know after market close Shopify for some reason they like the morning, part of it is I think you don't compete with analyst for their time because sometimes these internet analyst. You know like on that night we had Google and eBay they'll go to the what'll happen is they'll see the press release and I'll have to decide which one of the calls they're going to go to. And they'll say they all go to Google well now you're the eBay folks in your like does anyone have a question and it's crickets and there's no Wall Street analyst. It's kind of there because they're they're all over on the you're competing for their attention, so yeah so so it creates this interesting setup in that like around eight o'clock before the market opened 8 a.m. eastern Shopify announced and this one was really super squirrelly so. Shopify has been priced for Perfection for a very long time if you look at the various ways of measuring you know they're there. [20:18] Valuation against Revenue multiples of Revenue or ibadah or any of that and you look at a chart there always way up in the upper right hand corner just way off the charts and how Wall Street has valued the. So you know so they actually came in below expectations pretty considerably on the top and bottom line. But again because of that weird Snapchat has Snap Chat setup. It was viewed as a victory which is kind of really strange because I would have guessed. Because Shopify has been so price for Perfection they were kind of set for like a ten to twenty percent correction and then you know they would get back on track, but no they were like up 8% by by missing their numbers says like super strange reaction I don't hundred percent understand. So so I think what it indicates is that folks you know Wall Street was like really worried about it because, again they don't have a ton of they're there their merchants, largely our advertising that could be like a set of these these Snapchat advertisers or they're on Facebook and those guys had headwinds and it just felt like it would be natural for them to face. [21:28] So just put some numbers on it their revenue grew 46 percent year over year and Wall Street expectation was 54% I think this may be part of it too right because, this dismiss is still, pretty pretty good compared to some of the other numbers we just went through right so a 46% grower missing 54% expectations during these tough comps has as it's not hard to shed a tear on that. [21:53] Now they did they did kind of danced around i d f a and supply chain and and for the first time that I'm aware of the client to put out a consensus like an estimate for next year and they kind of talked about a framework. Um so I think and the other trick is if you think about it they're doing that call today which is the 28th right. So in their their digital business so they should have they have a kind of a read on the quarter so so I kind of felt like the body language was maybe that. They're not the setup in the queue for is maybe getting a little bit worse than Q3 but I may be reading too much into that so I thought that was interesting and then, they did talk about the supply pain, and then finally one of the big investment areas they called out for holiday is this Shopify fulfillment Network which I thought was interesting because I keep getting conflicting information on this where I've had people tell me they've got one thing in Canada and one of the US and they're tiny and they're not investing in it then on the call they're talking about how they're really investing in it so I don't I don't know what to make of that. Any takeaways from Shopify on your side. Jason: [23:02] Yeah well if you so first of all I have a personal theory that shopify's going to be more impacted by Supply pain than some of the other big players were talking about right and that's because, they don't, they're not a retailer they don't have any fulfillment they don't sell anything to Consumers they're just an aggregation of a ton of small businesses and there's none of those small businesses individually have any leverage our resources to hedge their supply chain problems whereas, Amazon and Walmart have a lot of levers and can buy ships and moved to different ports and do all kinds of different things to mitigate, the supply chain risks and so I I do think because they're predominantly small businesses that they're going to take a bigger hit from the supply chain disruptions then. Is Amazon so Point number one the, I looked at their gmv numbers and and I have to say like in general I'm a fan of Shopify I think they solve a real problem they do it really well I think they have a ton of growth opportunity, I think they've got a bunch of smart profitable. [24:14] Accelerator businesses that they've you know kind of added to the the core platform and the one I like the most is shop pay, and you know their own payment technology is now driving 50 percent of their whole gym V so they've done a terrific job of watching this this payment technology and getting incremental revenue from that and that's you know that's much more valuable than the, thirty bucks a month or two hundred bucks a month they get for hosting because as those the small businesses grow they get to grow with them and all sorts of good things so that's my precursor, um I hate it when people compare their gmv to Amazon and other retailers because it just it's not Apples to Apples. [24:56] Shopify is gmv mostly grows because they add a hundred thousand more small businesses that are each selling a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff right and so it's, it's not like Shopify hasn't attracted any customer Shopify hasn't sold anything it's kind of like if you said well FedEx is gmv is bigger than Amazon's or ncr's GM V which is the cash register in Walmart and Best Buy and Starbucks is much bigger than Amazon like it is but who cares right like they like NCR didn't create any of that traffic so. Let me just say like there are all these numbers where their cumulative GMB is getting very significant it's over 400 billion their gym V4 last quarter was 41 billion so that puts them at like. Was that a hundred sixty billion run rate which you know is starting to get there as I like the fourth or fifth largest e-commerce site, um and I like I think that's a false narrative that always annoys me a little bit. Scot: [26:01] They had their on CNBC and they have this stat they like to do where it took them eight years to get to a hundred billion and then a year to get to the next hundred billion or something I forget the number but. Jason: [26:12] So one one side note that the thing that always drives me nuts about their gmv as they don't give you any breakdown about churn right so you don't know. Like is that because all the their original customers are thriving and growing and making their GM V much bigger or. Did they lose all of those customers because they went out of business but they got twice as many new customers we really haven't known in their investor presentation this time they did have a cohort graphic. The kind of and it didn't have any numbers on it and you know so it's kind of hard to interpret but like. It implied that they're all cohorts are a disproportionate amount of their revenue and that their turn is less than I personally suspected, so I actually will reach out offline to Professor Dan McCarthy and see if he wants to accept the challenge of trying, to reverse into some some churn numbers from those Graphics that they provided. Scot: [27:11] Yeah that the trick they do in the software as a service world is they'll take a section of customers cohort like you know, Q 1 2019 customers and then the look at the revenue from that cohort well you could lose like eighty percent of them but the 20% survivors if they go up you know if they have sizable gmv growth their revenue swamps the unit lost of 80% that my guess is that's what they're doing. Jason: [27:36] Yeah and it's still for everyone listening it still is wildly long tail like they in this investor presentation they have a list of like the there there big Enterprise logos and it's Jim shark. Which is a. You know probably one of the bigger digital native vertical Brands but you know not not a billion dollar retailer and it's Staples of Canada right and like Staples is a good brand Canada is smaller than California so like. You know it's not like they're they're you know taking these huge Enterprise sites yet. Scot: [28:12] On CNBC they talked about how they just once Banks and that didn't really resonate with me I just can't imagine I don't know maybe it's like a side maybe it's like an international side or something. Jason: [28:22] Yeah now and I do think they have a ton of I mean they have a ton of growth in North America but the international growth I feel like is you know, huge for them and then all these payment things and, and you know they partnered with with a firm so they have buy now pay later in their payment echo system and remember, like you can now use their payment system for transactions that are not on Shopify so it's an endemic payment option on Facebook now and so it's interesting like in the long run they could get out of the web hosting business in just you know be a bigger more profitable PayPal. Scot: [28:56] Yeah sidebar there is a lot of rumors that house going to buy Pinterest and largely driven by this IDF a where everyone's trying to if you're at the bottom of the direct marketing World funnel all those people because of idea of a an unintended consequence I didn't catch up to Wood is they're all trying to walk up the to the the first party data which would be by acquiring Pinterest set very interesting you know I would say we were early. Jason: [29:26] You put in this but they came out strongly and allege that that wasn't true. Scot: [29:32] Yeah well it's interesting to Think Through like you know I do think that a lot of firms are thinking about this because the idea of a is actually causing maybe even bigger ripples than I thought. Jason: [29:43] In my world the way that plays out is everybody is like so focused on the retail media networks right so selling ads on the retail properties where they do have first party data, and it's a it's a very good practice everyone should be doing it but like. The amount of attention it's getting right now like how hot it is in the market like is way bigger than the possible upside and so you get like. Every you know Clarin as a buy now pay later service like they have an ad Network right I just like just for the the you know like if you use the clarinet app too, to maintain your installment love there there's like ads in there that they're selling to to advertisers and a personal favorite is the gap and the reason that's funny is like most of these ad networks are selling to their in what they call endemic advertisers right so if, Procter & Gamble is selling Gillette razors at Walmart than Walmart will get Procter & Gamble to buy a jet razor ad on Walmart.com it makes perfect sense, um guess what there is not at the Gap in the endemic for its first it's all Gap product right so they've gotta like they're going to get Kanye to buy an ad I guess but um, you know they've got to sell to non-endemic advertisers which is a much higher bar so it just funny how. Right there is a huge rush to first-party data right now. Scot: [31:09] You get a network and or you get an ad Network it's like Oprah giving out ad Networks. [31:15] Okay so that brings us up to this evening when Amazon released so it feels like everyone had kind of. We have breathed a sigh of relief and I was like oh Amazon's going to crush it and then Amazon and if you remember last quarter Amazon kind of had a bit of a mellow kind of slight Miss quarter. And you know the stock if you look at these these kind of there's all these different names for it like Fang and all this stuff but these kind of Mega tech stocks, a lot of them have been moving pretty aggressively so Microsoft Facebook Apple Etc especially Tesla and then Amazon has been lagging the pack and usually they're the leader of the pack so, yeah I think a lot of people were expecting kind of a beat and a Amazon to really kind of take off because it's been under pressure. That didn't happen so they actually missed expectations the revenues came in at a hundred and ten point eight billion which was below the hundred fifteen point five billion so 15% year-over-year growth which is, you know a very uh name has on Nyan kind of a result now it's better than, eBay is minus 12 percent but then again Shopify and I know it doesn't count exactly because they're adding scene for sales but you could argue I guess so is Amazon's adding third parties in here too, so it was it was a bit slower than people thought in Q2 they grew 24 percent so another big step down. [32:44] A lot of this is. [32:47] They're Mountain last year really because they focus on so many essential items and Q2 they really didn't get a bump until Q 3 q 4 so there they're comping their Compass actually harder than maybe like an omni-channel or even in eBay just because of the focus of. You have sung mask and what they called kind of Emergency Essentials last year. They peel the onion and they have this one segment called online source and that was only a 3% for the third quarter and that was a deceleration from 13% in Q2. And then this rippled to the bottom line where operating income came in at four point nine billion which was well below the 5.5 billion consensus, so that's the bad news and there was some good news do you want to cover some of that. Jason: [33:35] Yeah and side note is there a new thing called like. Like you know there are always these I'd beat and raised like you know vernacular for like you know you beat the consensus and then you you raised your guidance I feel like there's a new thing it's missing grow where like you miss all your consensus numbers but your stock still goes up. Scot: [33:56] Yeah that Shopify totally nailed that one has come very strange but they did it. Jason: [34:00] Um so yeah some of the interesting things in the in the Amazon number. I like to break down those segments you hit the you know the big segments online retail and it obviously. Had a pretty slow rate of growth by Amazon standards but an interesting subset of that is physical stores right so Amazon's got. Eight different retail formats the bulk of them is 500 Whole Foods stores and historically Amazon's physical stores is the one segment that shrinks every quarter right so going back to Q2 of 2020. Physical stores went down Thirty thirteen percent and then 10% in Q3 and then 7% in Q4 and then 16 percent of in q1 of this year and we're just we just got used to seeing that number go down and we all thought it was going down for two reasons, number one Whole Foods was kind of a distressed asset when they bought it and they haven't really improved it in any meaningful way some people would say they've. Diminished it and so like it probably is shrinking and it's the bulk of their the retail sales but then. [35:09] What Amazon has done for Whole Foods is help them sell groceries online and then of course the pandemic help them sell a lot of groceries online, but ironically Amazon doesn't count those whole food online orders as whole food sales they're not physical sales that that those dollars get attributed to Amazon online and not to Whole Foods brick and mortar, so if there's a big. Shift in mix from shopping and store to ordering for home delivery from Whole Foods that actually hurts physical retail sales so for all those reasons we're used to seeing that number go down, last quarter it bounced up ten percent and then this quarter it bounced up 12% so, I have to be honest I'm not exactly sure what's going on their part of it is e-commerce had such a big growth last year that comparatively, read the the rate of retail growth has kind of accelerated brick-and-mortar growth has accelerated a little bit and the rate of e-commerce growth while still higher than brick and mortar has decelerated so that kind of mix, you know maybe as favorable for the way Amazon does accounting for these stores maybe some of the other store concepts are, starting to get more traction like the Amazon Fresh stores perhaps I don't know but. [36:24] It's interesting to see that number going north for the first time in recent memory, of course everyone always talks about AWS being the profitable segments so they sold 16 billion dollars of AWS which was 39 percent growth which was an acceleration and growth so again, that's been kind of growing at 30% of quarter and now you know last quarter at Route 37 and 39 this quarter, um that makes a lot of sense the pandemic drove a lot more people to the cloud and online so you know it's AWS is firing up. [37:00] And then going back to the ads I talked about how big a deal retail ad networks are Will by far the biggest retail ad network is Amazon and they somewhat derogatory to me like Calder the retail ad Network other sales in the in their, and so this was their biggest quarter ever they sold a billion dollars worth of ads for the quarter which is 49 percent growth which is. Actually a significant deceleration Q2 grew at 83 percent right so this number is growing really fast. But the way to think of this is if you add up the last four quarters of their ad sales they sold 30 billion dollars worth of ads if you add up the last four quarters of AWS they sold fifty seven billion dollars worth of server services. [37:51] Think about the cost for that 57 billion dollars worth of server Services they have a bunch of silicone they make their own chips they pay a ton of electricity and they pay rent and people in all this stuff. In order to deliver that aw s right so there's a lot of cost for it to get that fifty seven billion dollars worth of sales. The the the cost of those ads is near zero right like. It's very well and so 30 billion dollars in ad sales I guarantee you is more profitable than fifty seven billion dollars in in server capacity sales and so, like its I said this last quarter but it's even more clear now that the most profitable business that Amazon is now. Um this this ad Network and in their their their investor call and he's sort of address that and he talked about the fact that like hey, we don't really. [38:49] I think internally of breaking out retail sales versus ads versus Marketplace because they are inextricably linked they all need each other, um and you know together they're a super powerful flywheel but like you know they basically recognize that like. Yeah you know we could break even or lose money selling Goods. When we're making a fortune on the 30 billion dollars of ads that we get to sell because of those goods right and and all the seller services for the marketplace half of their sales so. Like you know the the myth that that the retail pirate of Amazon's business is not profitable or less profitable than things like AWS like I think is. Is getting even more exposed and again all those those those businesses AWS and ads are are growing quite healthily at the moment. Scot: [39:42] Yeah it's interesting Colin Sebastian who's a good friend of the show and it's been on many times he pointed out for the one of the interesting. Parts of this quarter is for the first time if you think about Amazon having two pieces of product business and a service business so a Services would be a WS ads, this thing they call merchant services which is kind of FBA and some of the marketplace Revenue goes in there and subscriptions that is now for the first time the revenue from those pieces that quote-unquote Services pieces is bigger than product revenues for the first time ever, and you see it in these numbers right so online stores celebrated a couple other things accelerated but AWS and ads accelerated so it's a really interesting time where that that that kind of Tipping Point happened inside of there. Jason: [40:35] Yeah yeah for sure and then two other takeaways from the earnings call that I thought were Jewels they got asked because you talked about. Advertisers on some of these other platforms like Snap slowing down because of Supply pain right if I don't have products in stock I probably shouldn't be advertising those products, so they got a spike is other going to take it in the shorts and Q4 because advertisers are going to cut back because of Supply pain. Um and Amazon's answer was no that they're not seeing, people getting back on on ads from supplied pain they said like what is likely Gonna Hurt our comps and add sales for Q4 of this year is that Prime day was in Q4 of last year and that there's a lot of, add activity that's driven by Prime day so they said like you know what car comps. Four ads in Q4 maybe not as strong as they ordinarily would be but it's going to be because of the shifting dates of prime day not because. Advertisers are slowing down which is interesting and again Amazon's attracting. The long tail and the the head advertisers whereas like Snap is mostly getting long tail advertisers so. I found that really interesting and then Amazon also said like what. [41:53] Supply chains going to be really challenging and as a result we are incurring a lot of incremental costs but they were very strong that it wasn't going to hurt their revenue number that it was going to hurt profitability, but they felt like they had enough levers to pull and pull those levers, to ensure that they both were going to have enough inventory and that they were going to have enough fulfillment capacity, to deliver on that so they were super confident there and what they call that they said the the. Impairment that's going to be the most hard for them to overcome this quarter is not inventory it's not Logistics it's labor, right and that's the one that they felt like was the hardest for them to overcome is they've got huge turnover they're trying to hire a bunch of people and the cost to hire them are just you know skyrocketing because there's you know constrained pool of people willing to work and, and they're able to command a lot more for their their labor right now. Scot: [42:50] Yeah Jesse basically said that they're getting back in he she basically said I want to remind everybody this is a second quarter a CEO that one we have to choose short-term profit over long term customer experience we will lose money for for we will invest in long-term customer experience, Wall Street that is like we're entering into one of these investment phases usually they get kind of excited by it because usually ratchets, the orbit Amazons in up in the profit kind of spills over after about 18 months or so but there really wasn't a lot of enthusiasm this time so that was interesting, and then you know I mentioned the operating profit was about 4 billion their forecast for 4th quarter of the actually they do you know unlike most companies right now that are just like we have no idea what the heck's going to happen when I put out a fourth quarter forecast Amazon did, and they basically said the bottom line it could be between zero and two billion well that was like you know again that that's a very strong signal they're going to be spending a lot of money in the billions. And in fact they add a little color and said we see several billion dollars of additional costs related to and they put them in this order labor shortages higher wages, Global Supply Chain issues ETC but then they said they still need to hire 250,000 people for holiday and they're going to do whatever it takes because they won't be able to deliver and execute unless they have them. Jason: [44:14] He used an interesting metaphor he said like. That you know they just decided it wouldn't be customer Centric or in their long-term interest to raise prices or fees, and so he's like we really think of ourselves as a shock absorber and we are going to take the hit on all of these incremental costs for both our customers and our Marketplace sellers, um because we think in the long term that's going to strengthen the flywheel so I mean he was pretty like the you know there was not a lot of subtlety about the fact that like. You know it's going to there's going to be a lot of incremental costs to win this holiday but they're going to win the top line and not worry so much about the bottom line. Scot: [44:56] What else did you get from the Amazon call. Jason: [44:59] Those those were the big things one other thing that's interesting to me is. You know everybody's struggling to figure out digital grocery right now and saw the unit economics but there's this other tidal wave behind that that will call ultra-fast delivery and we've talked about a little bit on the show but they're all these firms. Go puff most notably but Joker and gorilla and all these firms like coming out with these. 30 minute or 15 minute delivery promises for a constrained set of products and one of the analysts ask Amazon like. You've always done really well against the your traditional retail competitors in terms of, of logistics but are you worried at all about these guys that are being like purpose-built for like a speed that's faster than your usual service level and it got a pretty arrogant answered I would say he's like. We really like our model we have a hundred and seventy eight thousand skews right now that are available for two hour or faster delivery and that's a lot more excuse to a lot more consumers than any of those companies. It was it was you know like I think obviously that is a space Amazons going to watch closely in play in but the. What's almost happening is they're just ratcheting up the service level for so many products I'm like when I you know Chicago is a advanced market for Amazon but when I put stuff in my cart now I get two options for same-day delivery. Scot: [46:29] Are you getting that like morning and then like there's like an insane one just like 4 a.m. Jason: [46:33] 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. yeah and it works like I wake up and there's stuff like at my front door. Scot: [46:39] Wow. Jason: [46:40] Pretty you know I wouldn't say perfectly but pretty reliably and so again like you know if I would have before noon there I have two windows often to pick. Products and I'm not having to go to some separate experience and Shop from some constraint set of products or things like that like I think the the universal experience in Universal cart and the move away from Amazon Prime now and all these separate experiences like, I do think in a way like Amazon is solving for ultra-fast delivery but they're just one generation more mature than any of these you know new companies. Scot: [47:14] Okay anything else there. Jason: [47:18] That is it on Amazon what did you have any other takeaways there's one other IPO that I thought was interesting this week. Scot: [47:24] Well then it was really weird because after the market closed we're all adjusting that and then Facebook's like hey everybody we're changing our name to Metta and then they put out this logo that looks like a warped eight on its side or like the infinity symbol that's been bent and you just look at it you're like I bet they spent eight hundred thousand dollars on that logo and you know there's. Jason: [47:47] Any amount of money spent on branding and Logo generation is well invested hashtag publicist. Scot: [47:52] Okay yes true true yes absolutely call Jason if you need new logo did you guys do that logo for. Jason: [47:59] I can neither confirm nor deny we did. Scot: [48:03] I love it sorry I love it. Jason: [48:03] Not because I'm being not because I'm being stealthy I just honestly don't know it's totally possible that we did. But I don't know but we certainly do a lot of great branding work including the Amazon logo so fun. Scot: [48:16] The chief the chief branding digital logo officer doesn't know what logos you're doing. Jason: [48:22] No but the way more talented people at Turner Duckworth would probably be able to tell us. Scot: [48:27] Okay cool what IPO did you say. Jason: [48:30] Yeah so have you been following their Rent the Runway IPO at all. Scot: [48:33] I have yeah. Jason: [48:35] Yeah so this is pretty interesting so. Digitally native company unlike a lot of the other digital native Brands that's kind of in the the re Commerce space right because they're they're buying a parallel and and renting it to Consumers, and they have been one of the the. Most hyped digitally native Brands because in general rental models can be like extra profitable you buy something once and you rent it a bunch of times, old Mentor mine Wayne huizenga used to do that with videos and he made a lot of money in that space and trash cans and other things. So it was interesting to both see their financials and then they actually have their IPO this week. So and it's a very. [49:23] I'll call it a bifurcated story so it's an 11 year old company they've raised over seven hundred million dollars in venture capital and their, wildly unprofitable coming into this IPO, so they lost a hundred and fifty four million dollars in 2020 they're forecasting to lose a hundred seventy 1 million dollars in 2021, um and of course they're in like the worst possible business case for covid right like they're they're renting apparel to women to wear to parties and to work, and two things no one did in 2020 is go to a party or go to work right so. [50:02] You know they historically they would have like hung their hat on having all this subscriber revenue and their subscribers basically got cut in half by covid their last 42 percent of their active subscribers the revenue drop from, hi in 2019 of 257 million 258 million in 2020 so covid really hit them. And you know you go man that it feels like they're kind of limping into the IPO and I want to talk about how that IPO went for them but two other interesting facts before we talk about that, one thing I thought was really interesting and and. Arguably like the one favorable thing and all of their financials is how they get the inventory that they're renting so, a catastrophic piece of news is that their inventory is way more fragile than I would have expected right so they they rent you know one of those garments six times and then they usually have to retire so they're not getting like. Tons of reuse about around each of these garments but thirty-six percent of their rental inventory. Is Rev share with designers so what that means is instead of buying it at the wholesale price and then them renting it a bunch of times, they're getting it free or at a very low cost from the design house and then they're sharing the profits with those those those brands. [51:26] That's frankly exactly how the video rental business grew like in the early days of Blockbuster we bought videos and rented them and later on you know we did rev share agreements with all them the movie studios and that. [51:38] Let you get a lot more inventory a lot more affordable. Um also surprising to me eighteen percent of their inventory is private label which I would have thought like a big part of the value prop of Rent the Runway was all these well-known designer Brands so I was surprised to hear they're able to get away with you know almost one out of four five garments being. [51:56] Being private label so that was interesting and then the last piece of catastrophic news is as bad as their finances look the accountants looked at it and threw up even more because, I mentioned that this inventory gets really perishable and and they have to throw it away well the what they did all their finances without including any depreciation of their inventory so, invented a new flavor of ebay.com bike ibadah before inventory depreciation and you know those if you were to actually put the depreciation on their books. The those losses I just read to you would be even much higher so. So mostly like a pretty negative look at the company going into this IPO and then I want to say they did the IPO at 21 and immediately the stock went up and they hit a high of 23 and everyone's like wow in spite of all this horrible finances. They're having a big IPO and then as the day went on the price started dropping down and now I want to say it's about 18 18 bucks and 85 cents so, you know pretty significantly down from that $23 offer. [53:16] Like Scott in your mind is like let's call it ten percent like is that a. An acceptable IPO is that a disaster does it surprise you given their finances that they were able to do an IPO at all. Scot: [53:30] Yeah and you know one of the ways I look at it is let's look at the valuation so they're doing a hundred and fifty eight million ish last year and we don't have enough data this year to kind of know there haven't really materially improved since then so let's say let's be generous and say they'll do 200 million this year they're at a billion market cap so 5x for a business that. You know has all the kind of the negatives you're outlined there. You know the they're not getting as much use of the Garment as you would think I think our friend Dan McCarthy is at MacArthur, McCartney or McCarthy McCarthy yeah he he kind of picked apart their Co hard data and it looks like they have pretty high churn, yeah I actually think it was kind of a win because that's a pretty good valuation for this snapshot in time. [54:24] Pricing IPOs is tricky because you want to kind of price it where you get a little bit of a pop but maybe ten to twenty percent up, but if you get more than at the company you're kind of sitting there saying we just sold a bunch of stock at a discount and that wasn't great now the good news is your hopefully you know you haven't sold the majority of your stock so you sold maybe 10% and I have like 90% that's worth more so it's. It's you're not going to totally cry over it cushions the blow yet going down isn't isn't a good look and it doesn't Kate that know a lot a fair amount of weakness as people you know maybe they got excited and they're coming yeah I think I'm gonna I'm going to kind of limit my maybe they sold half of it you also and I peel you're trying to place the stock with people that will hold it long term so the fact is down means that didn't really work that people were just trying to flip it for a quick buck. Jason: [55:17] Yeah one other side note like a lot of people were optimistic for this IPO because this like re Commerce model like it's you know potentially better for the environment, and looking at the economics it actually ends up that this is probably worse than like buying disposable apparel from H&M because like the the reverse Logistics of moving this stuff around so many times and then like having to throw it away pretty quickly and like you know weaning into the fashion trends and stuff becoming obsolete as new trends emerge like it all it all netted out to like it wasn't a very favorable ecologically story either. Scot: [55:58] Yeah well we'll see a for effort. Jason: [56:02] Yeah I mean my big takeaway again like there's there's going to be some interesting digital native companies but like this this myth that that is fundamentally an advantage model and that all these companies are doing great like this is one of the companies a lot of before there was any public data available everyone's like oh I think there's a billion dollars and they've got all this sticky reoccurring rental subscription Revenue so they're probably wildly popular and their costs are super low because they're renting the same garment over and over again so I this is an amazing business and then you know when you get to look under the covers why no it's not so you know I just I would just say, you can absolutely build a good digitally native business but like it's not a good business just because you're a digitally native vertical brand. Scot: [56:47] Yeah one for listeners yet as you know one of my favorite hobbies is I really love to watch The Road Show presentations but they're only out there for like a week or so all birds is on the road right now so that one is available and you have to go to Retail Road show.com and get from this list and watch it, it was one of the better ones I've seen in a long time the video they did the with the founders had like a cheekiness to it that was kind of unusual usually these. Jason: [57:16] Talking about the Auburn's one right because Rent the Runway is on there right now or was on their last week too. Scot: [57:21] Yeah it's on sadly it's faced off yeah the all birds one is really really good so I recommend folks watch that one and then I just saw that NerdWallet hit and I'm kind of interested to see how they talk about that one. Jason: [57:33] Yeah that has been entertaining TV I watch those videos on my my Peloton now. Scot: [57:41] Nice. Jason: [57:43] When I'm not listening to Amazon earning calls. Well Scott is happen again we have perfectly used up all our lot of time but hopefully people found some value in this recap and if you did as always we sure would appreciate it if you jump on the iTunes and give us that five-star review. Scot: [58:03] Yeah thanks everybody and until next time. Jason: [58:06] Happy Commercing!

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A close observer of the electricity sector says the Government must intervene to force big firms to give up assets and make way for a state-owned generator. An Electricity Authority report out on Wednesday says Meridian and Contact Energy's cut-rate deal with Rio Tinto, owner of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, has led to higher wholesale prices. Independent electricity retailer Electric Kiwi chief executive Luke Blincoe says this would be the fastest way of putting money back into consumers' pockets. He spoke to Corin Dann.

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Paul Yousef is the Principal Dealer at Millenium Wireless Technology, Inc (MWT), an authorized AT&T dealer with 28 locations in the Midwest. In today's episode, Paul shares a truly fascinating story about buying 7 struggling locations in Wisconsin and how he turned it into 10 profitable stores! Chris and Paul discuss the power of building strong relationships, taking a leap of faith and the importance of brand awareness.  

EP278 - Adobe Holiday E-Commerce Forecast with Taylor Schreiner In Episode 277 we covered some of the early overall holiday sales forecasts, and the issues likely to impact this holiday season. In this episdoe we get the very first look at Adobe 2021 Holiday Shopping Forecast. This is a deep dive on digital shopping behaviors based on Adobe Analytics, which analyzes 1 trillion visits to retail sites and over 100 million SKUs. We break it all down with Taylor Schreiner, Director of Adobe Digital Insights. Episode 278 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday. October 14th, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this episode is being recorded on Thursday October 14 2021 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-hosts Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners we are smack in the middle of October and for all of our retail listeners you know what that means it is go time for Holiday 21 way back in episode 277 last week we talked about the supply chain challenges I like to call that Supply pain and we shared the e-commerce retail forecast from Salesforce Deloitte and beIN but there was one notable missing forecast from that list and that's one of our favorites the Adobe forecast well in this episode we're going to fix that hole in the universe we're going to fill it and Adobe is releasing their holiday forecast here on the 20th which is when we'll be releasing this podcast and we are really excited to have with us today Taylor Schreiner he is the director of Adobe Digital insights and fun fact this is adobe's fifth time on the show Welcome Back Taylor. Taylor: [1:34] Thanks God do we get a free sandwich. Scot: [1:37] Sure if we were there together we would have a sandwich but we'll we'll do a virtual high five instead how about that. Jason: [1:44] Just to warn you Scott's character is like grilled into the sandwich so some people find that. Taylor: [1:49] Oh no I'll close my eyes this could thank you Scott thank you Jason it's great to be here we'd love talking to you guys and we love listening to you guys so it's a fun conversation to have. Jason: [2:03] We are thrilled to have you Taylor and I do want to Dive Right In to your methodology and then your data but before we do real briefly remind. Um the audience what your role is at at Adobe to sort of frame frame where your perspective is coming from. Taylor: [2:20] Sure so I run a group called Adobe Digital insights it's got mentioned and we are charged with, using aggregated and anonymized adopted in data to. Help the industry retail and other Industries as well understand the major trends that we see in the data that comes through Adobe analytics or adobe Commerce or any of the other. I could get it to Commerce and experience cloud services that we have. So so our job is to tell stories to make it take all that huge area did it and tell stories that help people understand their world. Jason: [2:59] That's awesome and so there's a bunch of different components of the the Adobe marketing cloud in the do Adobe Commerce Cloud but. Sort of Marque things Adobe analytics which a long time ago too many of us that are super old was Adobe was omniture, is a is a key component of the analytics suite and Magento is a key component of the marketing cloud and so you you get to see, an awful lot of, Commerce transactions across the web via those two products and the rest of the the Adobe stack and you get to use that anonymized data to sort of formulate this holiday forecasting this case is do I have that right. Taylor: [3:41] Absolutely and I really appreciate you calling me super old. Jason: [3:44] I didn't say you called it I'm not sure I said I. Taylor: [3:47] I remember I remember the under two days I do but yes. Jason: [3:50] I'm pretty sure there's like the URL for the analytics dashboard still says all mature. Taylor: [3:54] I think sometimes it does yeah now it's absolutely right face. Jason: [3:58] And then one important distinction some of the. Holiday forecast that Scott mentioned in the intro are actually overall retail forecast and one of the things that that is unique your forecast is slightly more focused you're focused on digital Commerce do I have that right. Taylor: [4:16] That's right we have we focused exclusively on digital Commerce and we're looking what makes us unique is that we are looking across, over a trillion interactions with retailers across thousands of retailers across over a hundred million skus with a boatload of AI behind that sort of categorizing and understanding it but you know the core of it I think for your listeners is weird. The where the group is actually looking at what people are buying in what quantity and what they're actually paying for it. It's ridiculous prices we're not doing surveys were actually looking at the the behaviors that we can observe a huge scale and using that to do both the reporting in this case are forecasting of the holiday season. Jason: [4:56] Yeah and that's super exciting to me because that I frequently rail against the value of stated preference surveys in our industry and and what we're talking about today is observed preferences lies actual data and consumer behavior that you're watching. Taylor: [5:11] Absolutely and it's gonna be fascinating. Jason: [5:13] Yeah so just two other minor precursors and we'll jump in because there is so much variability out there when you say holiday what date range are you talking about. Taylor: [5:22] Good point right now we're talking about the first of November till the end of the year although arguably make it into it you know some of the stuff is starting to creep into October 2 but when we talk about numbers were talking about November 1 to December 31. Jason: [5:34] Perfect we'll come back to that but yeah I think I think the the shoulders of that season are going to be more interesting than ever and then when you say, retail. Like approximately like what is in retail to you I could go US Department of Commerce restaurants and gas stations are in there like do you guys have a standard definition of retail just to kind of frame what we're talking about. Taylor: [5:56] We generally look at a thing where the transaction the Fulfillment are fully executed online we exclude from this things like travel which is a different industry or anything where it's simply a payment system online but you know any Commerce where you're doing your shopping, your your payment and your fulfillment online generally falls into into our space so not restaurants are delivery services but but the goods that you would normally associate with with retail shopping outside of that. Jason: [6:27] Awesome and so digital grocery than would be in there. Taylor: [6:29] Yes he's a digital grocery appliances apparel all that kind of thing. Jason: [6:34] Perfect okay well I think that's enough Preamble and we've done enough teasing what's what's the Top Line are we all going to get our bonuses this year or is it going to be bleak. Taylor: [6:43] It's your our data showing a good year or days showing a year where the story is really consumers want to shop consumers wanted to go buy online but it's going to be really different year for retailers and for consumers because of the supply pain that Scott was referring to earlier they're going to see a lot more out of stock they're going to see a lot, you know a lot higher prices frankly and that's I think it'll hold us back from having a incredible year. Now just keep in mind I'm talking about a 207 billion dollar, season which you know we don't have a great aggregate retail forecast that we based off right now but that's roughly $1 and for of all of all retailgeek. As far as we can see maybe a little more than that. And it's 10 percent up from last year which you know in the long run of historical growth rates is a little bit low but we're getting off of a 33% jump the year before so if you kind of look all the way back to 2019 we're still. Accelerated from where you would have expected us to be if you've been projecting from a prepaid nemec stance so it kind of depends on where you're looking at it from. But however you look at it it's going to be a big year. Jason: [7:58] Got it so in my mind I sort of think of it traditionally year of e-commerce growth for Holiday being kind of like pre-pandemic. We were kind of running in this like 10 to 15% a year sort of range, um and all of retail would be growing at like four percent a year so then last year the pandemic forces everyone online we have this monster year 33 percent and then this year you're looking for you're looking at 10% on top of last year's monster year. Taylor: [8:27] That's right that's right still going to grow it's still good grow significantly it's still good grow you know maybe as you stay at the kind of lower bound of what we used to see but it's a real real growth rate now they'll be some differences in what grows and how it grows you can get into that but it's going to be a good year. Jason: [8:44] And one of the thing that's always funny to me is I guarantee you when the the sort of superficial press get ahold of your forecast they're all going to write the story about how e-commerce has is slowing way down. Taylor: [8:58] Right yeah nobody wants to talk about two year growth rate or you know try and digest everything that's happened over over the course of the pandemic and fine and but I know, when you step back even a little bit e-commerce has transformed over the past 20 24 months I think the bigger story is people are shopping for their groceries people are shopping for their Furniture you know folks out here in Berkeley or buying compost online, the way that people engage with e-commerce has radically transformed over the course of the pandemic and that's here to stay and that's this the basis of that growth and that you know that's the part that really has accelerated over the course of cobit so if you want to look at a particular growth rate and say it's slowing down, fair enough, but I don't think for instance you know I want to make predictions in 223 but I don't think this 10 percent growth rate in 22 is telling you that 23 is going to be slow I think it's more of a balancing act between. 2020 and 2021. Jason: [9:58] And again like this still means e-commerce is almost certainly growing faster than brick and mortar. Filming the whole industry is still growing in a very disruptive year I do want to like maybe double-click on covid just for a second because this was the big open question when we were all living through, the first half of the pandemic was sure. Everybody's turning to e-commerce people don't want to go to the stores there's health and safety issues they're all they're all these open things so not surprising that it drove more people online a big question at that time was. Is this just an acceleration of a trend and this is going to be the new normal or will those people all be desperate to go back to the store and resume and back to the mall and kind of resume their pre-pandemic. Shopping behaviors and. My read of your data says no no we're locking in all those changes that happened last year and then we're we're growing at a pretty healthy clip from there is that a fair way to be thinking about it or am I wrong headed as got usually points out. Taylor: [11:02] No in this particular case you happen to be right the that's absolutely true if you look at the aggregate growth I think it tells exactly that story that it, it is we're banking all the gains that you got through covid and there were growing on top of that, I think another stat I think really tells the story is our buy online pick up curbside. Data which you know followed that trajectory you talked about Jason, getting up there as we got into the pandemic and retailers adjusted we have a we have a set of retailers we look at the median portion of their online purchase online orders that are fulfilled curbside and that ramped right up last year with all of its fulfillment challenges ranked right up right before Christmas you about 25% we thought that's a that's a high peak right we got into April of this year and it gone right back up to 25% people are still going and pick you up curbside that's a habit that they're in their shopping online and fulfilling next to the store and we expect that to hit a whole new record frankly as we go into this year so it's a it's a habit that people have gotten into and they're not letting go of. Jason: [12:10] Wow and if this is from memory but I want to say last year you guys said that well well e-commerce grew at 33% the dopest segments are the curbside pickup segment grew way faster than that it was like a hundred and ninety-five percent. Taylor: [12:25] Yeah I don't have enough time I have like it's something like that it was it was significant and this year's going to be. Going to be crazy and you know anecdotally you know there are a number of stores where I think hey I really like this I'm not going to set foot in number of those I'll shop with them but I'm against it putting them again for a while if I don't have to this is great for me. Jason: [12:47] Yeah you know it's maybe only partly analogous but I talked to a lot of Quick Serve restaurants. And you know they have the same thing right they sold they sold meals but it was all off Prem consumption and you know the restaurants that have the biggest intrinsic Advantage were ones with drug through. And I've talked to an awful lot of restaurant tours that are like if I could wave a magic wand and make my dining room go away and have a more robust drive through. I would do it because that's the customer that that appears to be the long-term customer preference. Taylor: [13:19] Yeah I think and I think a lot of retailers who have got good real estate or obviously having to rethink how much of this is a you know distribution center and how much of this is a shopping experience and you know it's gonna be different than it was two years ago for sure. Jason: [13:34] And then I guess the one other sort of observational thing I've noted is. Yeah so you know our store is going to get people to walk back in the store to pick up those digital orders are they going to continue to pick them up at curbside and you know one who knows but one clue. Um is pre-pandemic Walmart had these in storage lockers these robotic lockers this cool Tower and all their stores. Um and they d installed all of those towers and they're now doing a national remodel with a much more robust, curbside picking lot parking lot right so it seems very clear and Walmart's case that they're saying hey the. You know this isn't just a reaction of the pandemic this is a you know a permanent infrastructure change we're making two. To make to eliminate in-store pickup and make curbside pickup more. Taylor: [14:24] I think that's right I think that is likely the trend I think you know it there's a lot. A lot of the hassle of of shopping that you're removing with shopping online and pick you up at the store is, is that last not mile I mean the last you know a hundred feet hundred yards of going in there and getting in the inline or whatever if you can just sit with your app and check your email with some well so they put stuff in the trunk that's a lot of a lot of value add there so I would expect that to be continue to be the trend. Scot: [14:52] Bullets as I introduced I'm kind of keenly aware or following the supply chain stuff and I noticed in the front of your presentation one of the bullets is unprecedented out of stock levels if you guys can you share like you know what you think that's going to be and is there any way to put a number on that like you're numb your forecast would have been you know twice as big if it wasn't for this or you just guys are just flagging it as this adds risk to the holiday. Taylor: [15:21] It's a fair question something we think a lot about I mean it's really hard to characterize and we probably just need more more. Time with the with the day I met don't make time to think about it but time series data to really understand how out of stock. Alters people shopping behaviors whether they abandon or whether they take some to which they redirect themselves. I will tell you is that you're going into if you look at sort of 2019 isn't as the normal it was growing when people were getting more out of stock items more of stock hits over time maybe you know creeping up toward fifty or a hundred percent more even over the course of the year and the pandemic hits and people are five times more likely basically four and a half to five times more likely to get an out of stock message and that's today that's not necessarily going to Holiday where things could get more challenging. So that could go up where we see it often isn't most often is in apparel so again you know I think it's going to affect different categories differently out of socks in the Peril can be if you're looking for a particular stereo pair of sneakers or particular you know this is the 20th so what made you I was buying for my wife but something you know a vest or something right that is her birthday is on the 23rd so I want to tell her what's what I was shopping for, anyway the you know you might not get that. Scot: [16:46] Is your wife a listener. Taylor: [16:48] I really doubt it. But yeah you might get redirected to something else whereas in electronics for instance we see you know a lot of chips shortages but. But price is a bigger factor in some of that marketing and decision making and so you're able to see apparel prices creep up a little bit but a lot about a stock you see for instance Electronics prices creep up a lot from what we would have expected but that that has reduced the out-of-stock challenges that they faced. Scot: [17:24] So so it's hard to put a quantity quantify on at this point maybe you think after the holiday you guys will be able to. Taylor: [17:31] I think it'll be easy yeah I mean you know we have a clear estimate of what things might have looked like before I think after the holiday talk to us in January we can we will have a better sense of how this played out this holiday season one of the challenges that I think is out there is it's not clear yet how much out of stock consumers are really going to see this season, based on you know when retailers are running promotions how they're stocking us those promotions how they're managing their their portfolio of goods so. We'll have to see but it's something that yeah had Beyond in January we'll talk about. Scot: [18:09] Okay it's going to be more of a chess game because the retailer they have the only information about what they have and what they can expect and then matching that to the promotional calendar this year is going to be interesting and playing a little game of chicken with the consumer to because consumers should be reading about this a lot so it's going to be fascinating to watch watch how that plays out. Taylor: [18:29] Yeah I've been recommending to Consumers frankly to make two lists, say look you got one list of things where I know I want this for the holidays and you got to buy it early because you might worry about your your out-of-stock situation and then another set of goods were you think hey you know if this doesn't come through or if I don't get specifically the version of this that I want yeah if I don't get this TV but I get a different brand TV I'm okay and then those things you can really shop for on the big major sailed is but it's you know. It's going to be it's a lot of a lot of work for the retailers to figure out how this game is going to play out and frankly it's gonna be a lot of work for consumers to figure out how they're going to address it. Jason: [19:10] I guess one of the ways I think about this it's important to remember that out of stock does not automatically mean wah sales like a lot of times there's a. Customers first choice but the they'll make on the Fly substitutions are switches when they discover some things out of stock so we still capture that. That's a land it seems like all like you know all the people forecasting retail sales for this holiday are pretty robust numbers you're coming in with a pretty robust number, everyone saying we're not going to find, consumers first choice of goods so the sort of logical conclusion here is the consumers in a spending mood when I go to the store to get baby grow goo for Scott for Christmas and it's out. Um Scott's going to have to settle for some cool dune toy that I find. Taylor: [19:58] Hey didn't really cool the The Arc right and I think maybe the way to answer Scott's question directly is you know. In the face of this rapidly increasing out of stock, we're seeing at least you know up to the 5x of what we saw in 2018 we have still seen really impressive growth this year especially we're 2019 so so far whatever headwind it is is not. Super significant now I think you know the experiment that will be able to look at is if this starts to spike as we go into the holiday season if retailers have a hard time matching their inventory with with consumer demand then that might have a bigger impact in the they'll be saying we can look at more closely. Jason: [20:42] So you alluded to some of the categories and I have a feeling that. Um that both out of stocks and the impact of out of stocks could play out very differently in different categories right like if someone goes to the grocery store and we're out there out of your preferred brand of toilet paper. You're probably going to switch to another toilet paper but if there's a particular luxury fashion item or a particular toy that little Johnny is asking for for Christmas. Um you might be more inclined to hunt her harder for that product or defer that purchase and get it later or something like that right is does that make sense. Taylor: [21:16] Absolutely yeah and you know grocery out of stocks are not not at all infrequent with your particular Goods at a particular moment and then apparel is something I don't know about the rest of you but I've gotten. Pretty acclimated to the notion that I'm not necessarily going to be able to find the size and the color I'm looking for on the first try that it's quite quite possible I have to hunt around but you know there's a lot there a lot of style choices that go into that whereas I think you know if you're looking for a you know something specific as you say you know for particular. Particular toy your gift you might have to hunt them different retailers to go find it but you might be willing to do that exactly well. Jason: [21:58] So when you roll it out all that up are there any categories in your mind and end up being clear winners or losers for holiday. Taylor: [22:06] Well you know I think the it's it's a good question the the. [22:17] Clearly where we've seen growth is where we've seen the clearest growth in the holiday and in e-commerce in general has been in the things that are not holiday specifics of groceries apparel those kinds of things have really grown and we continue to see them grow so in some sense they are the Commerce winners because they've really absorbed the, I think what's going to be very successful early on are going to be these deals that get spread out around electronics and other gifts in an apparel we expect to see those went out very well I've got my eye though on non physical Goods things like downloadable games and things like that that happen the mic pop up toward the Christmas season is people who are looking to deliver something that is great experience especially for kids that isn't going to be constrained by shipping challenges and then. [23:18] I don't know where to put my bets this year because I've got my eye both on the demand that I see in a lot of things like gaming consoles that are looking great but also on you know there's a big question mark over over Supply challenges and how that will play out for them so I would be cautious in spread my bets but but electron you know the traditional gift areas are going to do really well and apparel seems to be continuing to take off very strongly in what we've seen so far. Jason: [23:48] So you the non-physical thing is super interesting ordinarily and holiday like as you get closer to the end of the year and you kind of hit shipping cut-offs and last year we talked about a lot about ship again I didn't, and you know bottleneck sit ups and FedEx and all of that you know retailers pivot to trying to sell. Intangible products pretty hard right and most notably gift cards so I imagine that with the the inventory situations this year that that's going to be more prominent than ever that you know if you can't find the, the toy you really want you know it might be an IOU you're getting, it holiday in the hopes of getting it in January or February but there is a new kind of intangible that kind of didn't exist last year and is having a little bit of moment and I have a feeling Scott's way more into it than I am but why. Does all do all of these out of stocks kind of play into the the the. In Ft kind of hate this year do you think that we could start to see some of them on the holiday wish list. Taylor: [24:52] I think I think in a few still have a ways to bleed into you know consumer experiences and consumer expectations that I see a lot of reading and not a lot of a lot of buying but if people can figure out how if retailers can figure out how to make. You're kind of cross that Chasm and figure out how to make it a real consumer experience and yeah I think there's a lot of opportunity there for that and you know and speaking of things that are not necessarily tangible and expire or unique you know we don't forecast travel into our into our data but we do look at travel and right now you know prices for. Plane tickets are about 13 percent less than they were on average in 2019 so you know depending on how. Vaccinations and mask mandates and travel restrictions all play out there may be a push if knock wood covid gets better for more experiential, experience driven options for people to give as gifts to. Scot: [25:49] One of the things that I've been really intrigued by and this is because some of the companies have gone public but this buy now pay later and I saw you called it out and I've seen a lot of the Wall Street analyst as a for my generation I look at it I'm kind of like, you know why don't I just put that on the credit card what's interesting is I've seen this whole generational thing where Millennials and gen Z years they're looking at it as they associate the credit around the item they don't like kind of having open credit and they want it to be around a specific item what what are you guys seeing as it relates to the be npl. Taylor: [26:25] We love new acronyms right be in PL no I have exactly the same experience you just got where I think exactly what you do this but we had two sources on this one is we looked at the actual data that we see flowing through our systems and we saw skyrocketing last year of buy now pay later Behavior we saw about 44 percent growth over the course of the year, weeks that slowed a little bit in percentage terms as we went through this year but you know as we get back into the holiday season I have every reason to expect that to re-accelerate, and you saw quite the distribution two of you know sources of this is some retailers got into this business a lot of financial institutions got certain play in this area so there's a lot more more options we saw those we saw the minimums for buy now pay later come down from those institutions and simultaneously we actually saw consumers spend more or put put bigger purchases on buy now pay later, and when we surveyed about it we, we saw what you were alluding to Scott this is a generational difference in the way that people manage and even think about what credit really is and was striking to me is that the top, category that folks told us that they were interested in using buy now pay later for was was clothing that they were making those kind of purchases and and Spring Meadow over time because they were, lumpy in their year and then they were spreading it out across their income without affecting their credit. [27:52] Electronics was obviously on that that set to you going to buy your television as televisions get bigger and more expensive or cheaper but bigger but what was the. [28:02] Third category that I thought was fascinating was groceries. And not again we dug under that that wasn't just people it wasn't generally people saying look I've got a week's worth of groceries and I spread the payments out over four weeks that's hard to make sense of but but more you know I'm throwing a party or having an event and I have a spike in my grocery budget no one at this I want to smooth it so it is a and then they were everyone was managing it sort of separately from this notion of having a lump of credit card debt they had a managed versus a purchase they had to think out and pay off those are two really different categories so it is it's a really different way of thinking about credit that's manifesting in buy now pay later and it seems to continue to be growing at a significant rate. Scot: [28:49] Yeah do you think. The pitch that a lot of these so that the two big companies are there's three there's a firm karna and after by and I'm sure there's more egg even like shopify's coming out with their own and what not, their pitch to retailers is it bumps up your cart size right do you think, is this going to be a factor this holiday in our is it going to bump up the ASP you think there are still too small to be a meaningful consideration. Taylor: [29:17] You know when we when you average across the enormous event that is the holiday season I don't think we're going to see average order value is our average basket, values go up significantly more noticeably are or more to the point me off trend of what we've seen in the past that said, you know I think. If these retailers are thinking about their customer base has more granularly and they're thinking well I've got a group of folks who I can actually juice where I can do sup there their basket sizes and their purchases by offering that I think that probably is true and, you know as with these kind of generational shifts it may make a difference in the longer term as you change consumer buying habits it may open up a door for that generation is incomes increase and time goes by so I think probably more of a long-term play when it comes to aggregate average order values but for specific audiences for specific customer bases I think it did make a difference. Jason: [30:18] Yeah it's going to be interesting you know there's a payment method that historically has been really popular holiday that you know. Rich people that listen to e-commerce podcast don't tend to think about but it's layaway. And I like one of the interesting Trends you know Walmart which does a very robust delay way business retired their layaway this year in favor of a buy now pay later service. Taylor: [30:44] Yeah I remember the I remember the Layla way shelves. Toys R Us when I was a kid and just sitting them seeing all these items sit there waiting for people to pay for them but if you can get the same effect. And both for the consumer on their credit and for the retailer in terms of getting paid then it's certainly more enticing for the customer to actually get the item rather than wait for it. Jason: [31:10] I know for sure I do like to sad things there was kind of a fun tradition because of away away some very kind people would often go into a retail store. And pay everyone's layaway. And it was kind of this like secret Santa thing and you know it would happen every year there would be lots of these cool stories so I worry we're going to miss out on that which you know probably isn't. Isn't hugely meaningful but it said to me but the other thing that worries me a little bit about holiday I do think like based on your growth forecast like this is going to be a bunch of consumers first experience with these buy now pay later services, and I would still say there's a lot of consumer confusion because like I look at the landscape of these services. And the spectrum is very broad there are you know some kind of thinly veiled payday loan operators that are you know charging like huge interest and late fees and all these things on one end and then there's there's some like. Really generous programs that are very popular in here that don't charge interest in don't have late fees and you know is sort of a. Very low cost and so it. I'm not sure consumers are going to be Savvy enough to differentiate all of those for this holiday I know Target in particular is offering two different buy now pay later options and. Consumers are going to have to learn how to shop for those vendors now. Taylor: [32:35] I think that's absolutely right Jason it's very hard you know it's sort of an unstructured product that can have a lot of different attributes and it's not like a credit card where you we serve reduced it to something like credit limit and interest rate right with some with some bells and whistles and it's also not, it's not even something that consumers know how to frame necessarily like I certainly didn't when I got into the space what is this what are these payments mean what is the penalty if I miss the payment you know what are my other options how are we going to communicate how you get paid what information do you need has if at my credit score it's a lot to think about and it's going to you know thinking has a lot of costs especially when consumers are shopping this quickly so you know I think we'll have a reckoning Reckoning but a moment to pause and. Reflect on how this all evolved we get to the holiday season it will see some things shake out I would imagine. Jason: [33:31] Next well let's pivot to something near and dear to my heart the we alluded to up top the shape of holiday so there's two. Parts of this that are super interesting to me, ordinarily when we talk about holiday we're laser focused on these five days at the end of November the turkey fiber that I think you guys caught the Cyber five. Taylor: [33:53] Yeah they're my wake up at 3 a.m. 5 so I have I hold them in a different regard but they are. You know the story that you know when we would talk to you guys before for the pandemic would always be you know hey this the the season is growing but these big days are growing faster retailers are concentrated you're competing and concentrating their deals on those days and we're seeing retail consumers follow suit and they're expecting those deals on those days that really flipped around last year we had a massive growth last year about 30 odd percent 33 percent for the season. [34:27] But the individual days were growing in the low 20s there are growing about 10% slower then the season as a whole and we expect that again this year we expect the season to grow at about 10% expect the big days to grow about five-ish percent. To be clear they're going to break records I mean we're going to have an 11 plus billion dollar a day on Cyber Monday we're gonna you know Black Friday is going to going to inch up close to 10 billion Thanksgiving is going to be you know over five it'll, level that we used to call Young used to be Black Friday of numbers it's going to be massive but both because, retailers are spreading out the deals for supply and fulfillment reasons and because consumers have really shifted what it mean what e-commerce means in other words they've established sort of water level of shopping for things that are not holiday and promotionally driven, those percentages are harder to move than they used to be so yeah it's going to be they're going to be big days they're gonna be huge that last hour before the end of Cyber Monday we're going to see $12,000,000 move through the system in a minute so, every minute so it's going to be big but it's going to be a different pattern especially the thing from the Retailer's perspective than we've seen in the past. Jason: [35:40] Interesting and do you have a feel for like how much it like I think you hit on the 2 reasons for it like one is the lot of large numbers there already huge. Huge numbers and and you know frankly in some cases quite you just can't squeeze more Goods through the. The funnels on those days and then the other one is changing consumer patterns and and just you know more General e-commerce consumption on every other day of the month and all those other things like it, I'm assuming it's a blend of both of those but but is is this year more prominent that people are going to be holiday shopping on other days or you think we've just. Taylor: [36:18] Yeah it's hard it's a hard call I think what's unusual about this year's really the retailer side I mean you could imagine a world where with fewer Supply constraints where retailers are more willing to put big sales on those big days and compete for eyeballs and four dollars so maybe a maybe there's a new normal where that changes but what I don't think is changing is that consumers are now permanently going to be in a state where Ecommerce is more and more available to them where you know be their home. Certainly their phone is is increasingly an easy place to go shopping and so all this concentration on these days is going to make less and less sense to them in terms of shopping behaviors if you go back out you know the origin of these days is really about sitting outside a big box and and can't be out and trying to get deals because you had to go in person but if you don't, if you if you if it's less and less the case that you actually have to go get things then it becomes easier and easier to spread out your purchases over time and if you're always shopping online you're not, you know just sort of the complete opposite of what you know going going to the office for Cyber Monday to go shopping which is what some of us used to do then you know you're much more open to these deals and opportunities that that retailers can offer you throughout the season so that part's not going away. Jason: [37:40] That's a great point so so then let's let's zoom out a little bit you guys are counting holiday is November 1 through December 31st a lot of retailers would, include January in there, holiday season again a lot of you know gift cards and returns and people you know come in with that return and they buy more stuff so January normally is a good month, and then this year the deals. Started in October right like Amazon Started Black Friday deals on October 4th time to get started on October 10th I think. Sort of boosted because of the supply chain concerns retailers are fighting really hard to start holiday shopping in October, and because all the stuff we really want is stuck on a boat off the coast of Long Beach we might not get it until January or February so with all of that supply chain squishiness. Like is there like what you know. Taylor: [38:39] What do we see. Jason: [38:40] Holiday in November and December but is it even a like the rate of growth is even bigger if you were to kind of you know redefine holiday as a October through February. Taylor: [38:51] Yeah I mean the way that shows up in our data is that we see a we so far I've seen a very strong October, we've seen very strong October in terms of overall e-commerce growth not not on par with you know the big holiday months but it's you know we're looking at you know roughly that ten percent year-over-year a little bit more for October so it's a good sign. [39:17] The what we're also seeing though is we're keeping a close eye on prices and as I said we're see we see. Data at the transaction level and it gives us a particularly unique view into into prices and we're going into your September are digital price index which is the of the basket of goods that we see purchased online through retail was up 3.3% over last year less than the CPI was up last month but still really significantly and for context up until the pandemic we had never seen digital inflation it always be always in prices going down on part about 5% order of about five percent so people are going into this season with higher prices there will be some discounts but we in October but I don't think they're going to make a dent in that inflation yet. And frankly from what we've seen historically over the other holidays of this year we expect to go in with higher prices for goods in general and we expect discounts to be, significant but a little bit shallower than they were at their last year their deepest point so consumers may be paying significantly more, this year on a Black Friday for a particular item than they were they would have been last year on that same date when you add all that up. Scot: [40:35] Nursing the so I know we're up against time so a little lightning around here it wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show if we didn't talk about Amazon any any tea leaves on Amazon. Taylor: [40:47] So we are we assiduously avoid commenting on particular retailers for a number of reasons but everybody's going to have a big year I would imagine this year. Scot: [40:56] My theory is if the supply chain matters Amazon Amazon Walmart and maybe Target are so dialed in on that but it was some a bit of an advantage and could hurt the small guy this year but we'll see how that plays out. Taylor: [41:11] What do you think the large versus small is a good good framing of that, you know bigger retailers in and out of stock in a world without of stocks have more options to to offer and complete a sale and then small retailers who may see their carts more likely to be abandoned I think that's a significant factor. Jason: [41:31] Okay so then the next lightning one is you talked a little bit about inflation you talked a little bit about like discounting not having to be quite as deep. How does that all washout in terms of profitability I do do retailers make more money on fewer sales this year or does do all these supply chain costs eat it up and, and it's you know thin margins. Taylor: [41:51] Yeah well so I think margin management is going to be a whole different game and retailers of already had to think a lot about that this year that you know the top line is going to be bigger per item so you're going to get more Revenue but I don't see that really being driven by some kind of margin maximization Behavior it seems to be largely driven by increasing increasing costs of goods and so you know I don't see a real Gap step open it up between increasing costs and and increasing Revenue to create a giant chunk of margin there. Scot: [42:28] How about anything on device Trends any news kind of done to be a bit of an old story that you know the smartphone is overtaking the desktop. Taylor: [42:37] There is a little bit of news it's kind of fascinating so we that's that's it if you looked at the share of Revenue that was doing through smartphones from 2014 till even into the pandemic you could have basically drawn a straight line I mean it was a it was a sort of, Early College regression experiment that we've been super easy for First Years to do that's changed a little bit smartphones are still gaining cheer don't get me wrong they're still growing faster than desktop in terms of the revenue is coming through them. Ever so slightly more slowly than than they used to and it may be an indicator that, in America at least we may be headed toward an equilibrium to looks more like a sort of 50/50 World between desktop and phones which is obviously really different than some other parts of the world where that it may be 80/20 or 90/10. [43:33] Right yeah I got two expense that so I can you know make it part of our part of our. Jason: [43:38] If we get our new app tops in time then we're all shopping on our laptops otherwise we're all shopping on our floor. Taylor: [43:42] Exactly. Jason: [43:45] But it wasn't a or we could talk all day I know you're in super high demand this this time of year and and you know quite frankly not in demand at all the rest of the year so I'm sure we'll talk again when. When you're less popular, but this was awesome we really appreciate your time as always if folks want to continue the conversation or have questions you can hit us up on, on the Twitter or the Facebook page, and as always if you got value out of this show we sure would appreciate it if you'd go on to iTunes and give us that five star Christmas review. Taylor: [44:19] That's what I'm going to do Jason. Scot: [44:21] Awesome we push it if that's aren't your gift to us and it's digital so we don't have to worry about Supply pain if I think in past years you guys have set up kind of a cool holiday news Hub is that something you're going to do this year and we're world where will we find them. Taylor: [44:37] It will be there I need to get you the URL we can put the URL in a link to this if you guys are watching this online I will make sure you guys have it before we got there but yes there will it'll be there. Scot: [44:47] All right we really appreciate the time. Taylor: [44:50] Right thank you guys I really appreciate Scott real patient appreciate Jason happy to do this anytime. Jason: [44:56] We appreciate you Taylor and until next time happy commercing!

Sr. Retail Analyst Andrew Cox is joined by Lead Economist Anthony Smith to chat with Donna Kintop, SVP, Client Experience - North America at DDC FPO. Andrew and Anthony also discuss Amazon's hiring plans, a slew of M&A activity, and freight market imbalances.Follow Great Quarter, Guys on Apple PodcastsFollow Great Quarter, Guys on SpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

Sr. Retail Analyst Andrew Cox is joined by Lead Economist Anthony Smith to chat with Donna Kintop, SVP, Client Experience - North America at DDC FPO. Andrew and Anthony also discuss Amazon's hiring plans, a slew of M&A activity, and freight market imbalances.Follow Great Quarter, Guys on Apple PodcastsFollow Great Quarter, Guys on SpotifyMore FreightWaves Podcasts

Bryan asks Krissy to join his new MLMM business, LuLaNO. Then they wonder why they got news alerts about Kourtney K and Travis B, and who the f*&k cares? Plus, the new trend is wearable microphone/amplifier combos and Bryan doesn't think it's funny. Finally, the gang review some 911 calls that are less of an emergency and more of comedy routine! It's a wild episode of TCB...get a cold beverage, jump in the car and call the police on yourself!LINKS:Want a TCB limited edition collectible sticker? Each series sticker is limited and first come, first serve. Click HERE to find out how!Send us show ideas, comments, questions  or hate mail by texting us or leaving a voicemail at 1-661-Best-2-Yo (1.661.237.8296)Watch Us on YouTubeTCB Live On Fireside AppSponsorStreamlight Lending By SunTrust Bank (Use Code TCB for additional interest savings)BeachBound is beach focused vacation travel planning agency...online!Special Thanks To Moon Cheese For The Snacks! Use Code TCB For 15% Off Moon Cheese Products...Click HereSpecial Thanks To Project Pollo Our Vegan Burgers!Studio Snacks Provided By Siete Chips! (Try The Fuego Flavor!)Castbox is the TCB publishing partner . Download The App Here!New Episodes on Tuesdays and now Fridays everywhere you listen to podcasts!1-(661)-BEST-2-YO  |  (1-661-237-8296)

Carman Wenkoff is the EVP & Chief Information Officer at Dollar General. In this role, Carman has led the company's digital transformation, implementing technology advancements to enhance the brick-and-mortar retailer's offerings and elevate the overall customer experience. Throughout Carman's career—from working in construction to practicing law, founding a tech company and now as the CIO of a major retailer—he has always addressed challenges head-on. In this episode, Carman shares the secrets to successfully leading a company through digital transformation, and explores how staying true to his purpose and focusing on making a difference in people's lives have been the most important driving factors behind his success.

EP277- Holiday 2021 Preview Holiday 2021 will be one of the most uncertain holiday events in modern retail history. Major disruptions to the supply chain, the last mille, and to consumer behavior as a result of covid, will make this year extremely hard to predict and manage for brands and retailers. Will shipageddon 2.0 play out again this year? Will the supply chain become the supply pain? With Amazon and Target starting holiday deals early in October, and consumer still looking for scarce inventory late into January or even February, Holiday 2021 is likely to be 5 months long. In this episode we break down all the potential issues, and make some prediction about how it might all play out. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 277 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday October 3rd, 2021. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 277 being recorded on Sunday October third 2021 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners, Jason this is a really good time for listeners to pause because we're going to do a deep dive here so that means it can be a little bit of a longer episode. And leave us that five-star review this episode is going to be so good you can go ahead and pre leave us the five star review so we'll wait for second for you to come back. All right thanks for doing that that really helps us out as we get the word out about the show, Jason last year at and I went back and had a one of our many interns look at this and it was exactly this time last year I think was actually October 2nd recording this in October 3rd so it's a pretty darn close. We coined and we were doing our annual holiday preview and we both coined and predicted ship again and that is where we saw pretty early on I think before a lot of the rest of the folks in the industry that there was going to be both a surge in digital adoption due to covid plus the normal holiday increase from e-commerce and that that was going to more than absorb all of the available last-mile demand and that's the why we coined ship again and it happened and it was bad but we all survived and made it through and hopefully the folks listening to this show got in front of that both on their business and personal side. [1:58] Well this year we want to use this episode and do a deep dive into what that's going to look like this year and it's a more complex situation last year was pretty easy to lie to read those tea leaves because you know we were already pretty close to capacity before covid and it was kind of pretty easy prediction to say that we're going to far exceed the ability to deliver the packages. This year we have a lot to unpack for you spoiler alert it's going to be worse than last year much worse because not only is it that last little piece of the whole digital retail chain of events The Last Mile that's going to be a problem but it's all the other pieces leading into it that are going to be a problem something we call the supply chain but this year we are going to call it the supply pain so we're going to peel the onion on this and first we're going to look at the economic setup heading into holiday 21 then we're going to look at the global state of supply chain then we're going to look at some of the holiday trims that are kind of factors we think that are going to tie into this last some of the pontificate errs are out with their forecasts and we're going to go through those and kind of see what we think about those. Jason want it could suck kick it off with the economic setup coming into holiday 21. Jason: [3:15] Yeah awesome Scott so first of all let me start by saying on the macroeconomic picture most of the professional analysts that look at this. Are pretty uniform in feeling like the consumer is generally in a good place that the economy is in a pretty good place and they are all very bullish on the consumers ability to spend this holiday. And I say that because my own personal feeling is that there's a little more uncertainty cooked in there there certainly are some encouraging favorable things. And there's a few worrisome things and I think. What's going to become the theme for all of these sections we talked about today is there's a significant amount of uncertainty there's a lot of things that could swing either way and have a dramatic impact on holiday so. It is what it is but. Sort of giving you how I look at the macroeconomic situation the first thing we'll talk about is inflation and there's a bunch of ways to look at inflation but a simple one is there's this thing called the Consumer Price Index which kind of. Factors in how much of each good consumers purchase and how much prices are raising for that, and the the CPI is it about 5.25% right now so that's pretty significant we more expensive Goods that consumers are having to pay. And ordinarily that inflation can be problematic for the economy a couple of things to know though. [4:43] If you kind of look at the shape of that CPI it actually is going down a little bit from a peak in July and so possible we've seen the. Peak of inflation and it's starting to come back down. Inflation is a mixed bag for retailers and holiday because they get more money for everything they sell they tend to sell less stuff but make more on each in certain circumstances it can be more profitable. Um but you know the goods are costing more we've got this 5.25 percent inflation. We also though have a pretty significant increase in wages so people are getting paid more for their work, particularly low-income people, are getting paid more for work retailers and warehouses and all kinds of companies are having to raise their wages to compete for the for this labor force that's been hard to find right now and so, wages are going up and in general the analysts would call those two things Awash that that consumers. Are getting bigger paychecks and they're having to spend more on their necessities and that at the moment that's about Break Even so two interesting things to know. [5:52] A kind of predictor of future spending is this this huge survey that University of Michigan does every month the consumer confidence index. And when when we were kind of in the peak of recovery from the first wave of covid-19, that index was a leading indicator that said consumers were starting to feel good about the economy and it hit like it's this index it over a hundred today it's sitting at 71, which is the lowest point since January of 2019 it's not, like a historic low or anything like that that you know you go like oh it's way below normal, but it does appear that consumers are in general feeling less good about the economy than they were, um you know just a month or two ago now there's a bunch of political news out right now and there was fear of government shutdown that we've already averted and those kinds of things have a big impact on the consumer index oh. [6:49] Um I that consumer index doesn't have a perfect correlation with spending so I don't spend too much time thinking about it but just to know, that's a number that had been favorable and is kind of shrinking down. A big one we talk about is unemployment because people don't have jobs it's hard for them to spend on Goods obviously at the beginning of the pandemic we had a huge spike in unemployment, unemployment is actually pretty good right now we're at five point two percent. The kind of pre-pandemic average was about four so we're not all the way back to pre-pandemic average but that pre-pandemic. [7:22] Point was a historic low so historically 5.2 percent is pretty decent for unemployment. Um so like most most analysts would say that's a favorable indicator the two things to know there is, that's based on the people that are seeking jobs and not getting it there actually is a ton of people that kind of took themselves out of the workforce we. Fully understand where all those people went but a big chunk of those people were second incomes for household so like a lot of women. That like maybe don't have as good a help childcare as they had before or more school challenges or things and so they haven't gone back to the workforce and many of them are seeking work so they don't show up in the unemployment number so. Just be aware like household incomes are somewhat stressed because of that factor and then as we've talked about before on this show like as of July. People that make over $60,000 a year the unemployment is actually ten percent better than it was before the pandemic so they're doing great. And the low-income people that are making less than $30,000 a year their unemployment is still 21 percent lower than it was. The beginning of the pandemic so so a little bit of a bifurcated recovery on the jobs thing. [8:38] One of the reasons that we historically have that we had high unemployment was because there's all these rich benefits this enhanced unemployment benefits that people got that all expired last week. So if people were staying at home because they could make more and unemployment that that justification probably ended. The bad news is that ended in 26 States over two months ago and in general the data shows that people did not rush back to work when it ended. So there's not necessarily a reason to think a ton more people are going to rush back to work now that that it's ended everywhere but we'll have to see. Um the other macroeconomic things all these natural disasters are negative to the economy so you know when hurricane Ida takes a hundred billion dollars out of the economy that's a bummer. Um [9:25] Another hugely favorable one in the one that most of us are hanging our hats on that are looking for a good holiday is the savings rate and this is the most unprecedented recession of all times. Unemployment you know went way up at the peak of the pandemic but so did savings which has never happened before, and part of that was because we had all this stimulus money we were pouring into the economy but the savings rate normally hovers around 8% it shot up to 32 percent during the peak of the pandemic, it's way off of that Peak it's a nine point six which is still a little higher than it was before the pandemic and that. All that extra money that a lot of household socked away because they got the stimulus and they spent less during the the peak of the pandemic. [10:18] Arguably puts consumers in a good place to spend for this holiday the counter-argument would be all that stimulus. Is mostly over there still are you know very lumpy employment situation and a lot of that savings has dwindled, um so we'll see how it goes, um but then the last fact I'm going to throw up before I go at Scott get a word in edgewise is that the stock market has done phenomenally right and, we're way up from the pre-pandemic level and so the investor class and people that have you know as a meaningful portion of their wealth. Tied to the market. Did terrific right and so if there is economic uncertainty and instability in this economy it's bifurcated and it's the lower-income people that like do not have equity in the stock market. Um there were her but roll all that up and the the professional analysts feel like. Macroeconomic situation all to all in is pretty good and of course when rich people do well that help certain sectors of the economy quite a bit right and at the moment luxury and jewelry are doing phenomenally well for example so. That's kind of my snapshot of the macroeconomy Scott anything you'd violently disagree with or anything you pay particular attention to. Scot: [11:45] I think I think that's right I think you know there's a lot of folks that feel the inflation the CPI isn't the right inflation number it's kind of this old metric. This basket of goods and doesn't capture a lot of things you know there's, I follow a lot of the crypto people and, so there's been a huge wealth creation through crypto and that whole world which is kind of interesting and then you know there's there's a feeling that the FED has pumped so much cash into the system that is just sloshing around and kind of crazy ways which is why you saw that savings rate kind of go up as high as it did and you know they're they're talk track goes that that's why we're not seeing as much employment where folks have taken so those free free dollars and and you know. Done something with it so that they don't need a job now or they're going to be less likely to enter the workforce but I think at all. Yeah I would say I agree with the analysts on that it's going to be a pretty good holiday. [12:51] But I think the problem we'll get into that as I just don't think there's going to be a thing to buy so I don't not sure if it matters. Jason: [12:56] So step one American families probably have some money to spend okay so now as we've already alluded to the next challenges what is the supply chain look like and what could they spend it on and Scott what's your kind of read there. Scot: [13:13] Yes Supply chains from those things we always talk about but then you know in in your mind you have this kind of linkage these things linked together I remember as a kid when you would cut out the little construction paper strips and make the little chain to go around. The holiday tree there II reminds me of that and we kind of vaguely talk about it as this big, big thing and we want to really unpack it on this episode so as a summary you know there's when you make a product let's say it's one time in a million familiar with right now is a vehicle that which is one of the more complex products or even a. You're relatively simple product like an electronic toy or an apparel item or almost anything it's going to have first of all it. It's going to have component parts right so there's going to be some form of pieces that go into that I kind of mentally think of them as the Lego blocks that make up that item so if it's a cool trendy trench coat there's going to be obviously fabric buttons may be a variety of fabrics and things like that so there's generally it's hard to make any product without there being at least 10 inputs and then many times, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands as you get into like iPhones and vehicles and stuff like that. [14:33] So that's important to remember is each one of those component parts has a supply chain right and you can't make a widget until its component pieces are all there so what happens is we're seeing this really interesting and it's hard to know the root cause or theirs some of the economic stuff you talked about is part of it we're we're just having labor shortages that cause things but then you know we'll talk about some of this there's we import a lot of our goods from China and they're having all kinds of issues of their own there's covid related things non-covered related things but generally let's think about the supply chain and kind of the broad sense of you have typically the bulk of goods are made offshore some of them are are made on Shore but let's kind of assume in this example A lot of these products are coming from offshore or at least income the many of the components maybe there's some assembly in the US but at least the the components for a any widget are made offshore so that's number one so that has to be made in a factory somewhere and then shipped here so there's the port of origin so it leaves a port in a foreign land and then needs to come on its way to the United States for a consumer to buy it. That Journey can go a variety of different ways will to it can go by boat or air, the standard way that products are moved is through containers so you by everyone seemed these containers there's all these cool. [15:57] We just opened up here a restaurant container Village kind of a thing so you have those containers their specialized boats that carry these and and or you can put them on airplanes. So then they get on a boat let's say the bulk of products do go by boat there is some by are then they have to go over the sea and then they get to a destination port so there's you know there's two ports involved with every product that comes across in a container then it has to be unloaded from that boat you've probably seen these giant cranes somewhere. [16:29] Fun Star Wars fact those are the that's where George Lucas got the idea for at-ats he saw some of the cranes and one of the ports on the west coast and thought of what if you had a giant walking robots that look like that so those have to be unloaded and then typically you're going to put them on either so then when they get to the United States in one of the ports they're going to be offloaded onto either a truck and then part of the truck that's really critical in this is called a chassis so if you've ever seen you've probably driven by a million of these container trucks but if you take the container off that's the chassis part as you've got the front part of the truck, then you've got the chassis which holds the container and then the container sits squarely on there it's pretty clever if you think about how it's all been designed or that same container can be put over on rail so there are specialized railroad cars for carrying containers and then and then the product goes on its way then it makes it to a warehouse and then it goes to from that fulfillment center it gets distributed many times do a couple maybe from a big kind of inbound fulfillment center to some regionals to some locals and maybe even one step closer to kind of hyper local and then it gets into the last mile delivery part of the world so it gets onto the virtual shelves and then is sold and goes into that last month so [17:52] There's there's a lot that has to happen right in there and we're going to go through some of the things that are not working right now and you know like any any chain any. There's at least common denominator problem so all that can work great and if you don't have Last Mile Vehicles then you've got a problem or, the factories aren't making things fast enough then the whole chain is compressed and you've got this other set of problems and you know where we are now is almost every single part of that chain I just walked through is is kind of you know sport or in a bad situation right now and we'll take you through some examples. Jason let's start with factories what's going on there. Jason: [18:34] Yeah well a couple challenges with factories so obviously the we have the most factories in China and the good news with China is. Covid is mostly under control they definitely have had a. A spike from from Delta they almost had had down a zero before Delta. [18:55] Because of their their concerns about the the virus they have China has what's called the zero covid policy and what that means is. If they have a single case of covid they will they will shut down an entire business or. Even a sector of business so while there's not huge outbreaks of covid and factories right now. There have been a bunch of examples where only a few cases of covid showed up and that caused a factory to be closed for two weeks so there there have been some disruptions with the Chinese factories. But the bigger problem has been that it, from before and in the very beginning of covid a lot of manufacturing got Diversified and moved out of China right and so the second biggest manufacturer of apparel behind China right now is Vietnam. Vietnam has had a lot of trouble with Delta and about a third of the factories in Vietnam are shut down right now so a lot of the factories that make goods are not making as many Goods either because. [19:56] They don't have very good access to vaccines and they're having covid problems or they have really rigid government policies like China. And then forecasting a future problem that's a huge Debbie Downer, is China is actually experiencing a real energy crisis right now and China always has to kind of, ration electricity and they give quotas at the beginning of every year to these factories and factories often have to shut down because they exceed their quotas. Well this year like they have less. [20:31] Energy capacity in China for a variety of reasons in the cost of coal has gone way up. Um there's there's fixed pricing for for energy in China and said the producers can't charge you more even though the cold cost more and so they have less incentive to make it which means there's less energy and so there's a lot of fear that there's going to be a ton more slowdowns of Chinese factories because of this looming energy crisis so all of those things. Our kind of conspiring to make like the amount of product available from the factories like. Significantly inconsistent and hard to. Scot: [21:12] And then say the call thing and because I have read a couple articles on this and I haven't under Center so they're in an attempt to be green they've lowered the price of coal so cold manufacturers have stopped making goals that. Jason: [21:26] So I think that's what the the green thing has a significant impact here but the the communist country they set the the. It's a. [21:37] The energy industry is a tightly regulated industry and so the prices are fixed so that so the government decides the beginning of the year what the price of electricity is going to be. [21:47] So then these factories are only allowed to charge that price or plus or minus 10% of that price, and coal is four hundred percent more expensive so a lot of factories don't want a lot of power plants don't want to make energy electricity from coal right now because they can't do it profitably, they don't have permission from the government to charge for hundred percent for their electricity but they're having to pay 400 percent for their coal so. There is less production because of that it is also absolutely true that China has some, zero emissions by wants a 2060 things and they have concrete milestones in place every year and so even before cover that constrain how much electricity they were going to be able to make this year with current production means. And it meant that factories had a quota, um and and often that means Factories do periodically shut down when they use up their quota factories are rushing to get more efficient so they're all its, it's like everything it creates all these Downstream effects whatever equipment you use to make your stuff there's probably a more energy efficient version of that equipment that you now want to buy. But it's hard to get your hands on so all the factories are competing for the more energy-efficient versions of all this this materials, but the it's likely that more factories are going to be shut down for longer this year than ever before because of energy shortages. Scot: [23:14] And I saw an interesting graphic I forget I think is there Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal where the government then said well if you're going to shut down energy they created these zones and they put like a lot of that Apple manufacturing plants in The Greener zones that we get more power but then they neglected a lot of the input parts so. But the factories that can make the iPhone 13 or operating but they're sitting there idle because the the red zones that aren't getting a lot of power or only able to run like half a shift are. Jason: [23:44] Per your point like even if the Lego factories allowed to make Lego castles if they're not allowed to make red blocks. It's tough to make a lot of weight so castles so that that is yeah. It's a mess and then to give you an idea how cute it is normally they only shut down the the industrial areas there's so much constrained energy now that they're starting to shut down residential areas so people are. Are like having their power in their residences turned off as well. Scot: [24:14] Interesting and then I've been tracking ports here in the US very closely but what are you seeing at ports of origin in other countries. Jason: [24:24] Well this is one we're very publicly this zero covid policy that China has instituted has come into play. So that that all the biggest ports in the world are in China the third largest port in the world is divided into four terminals one of the four terminals was just shut down for two weeks because of a single. Positive test of covid and so that again to the extent that the factories are making stuff and they need to load up all those containers, um if they have to stop loading for 2 weeks that that creates a real lumpiness in the in the supply chain and that is a particularly hard thing to predict right like if you're just saying like oh man of. Factory you know has a bunch of sick workers it's going to shut down you can kind of watch that and see it coming but what you can't see coming is, you know a very small number of cases having a very material impact on the supply chain like these these ports that are shutting down and so the. The those impacts are sort of outsized on the supply chain at the moment. Scot: [25:34] Yeah and then so so now we've got our products you know, if they can make it through this Gauntlet that we've already laid out they're going to get on a boat and they are going to go get packed into a container and there's a fun if you're a business you're trying to get as much of this product into a container as possible because it's pretty much all you can eat once you once you buy a container there's fractional containers whatnot and because of there's a shortage in containers and then the cost to send these containers has gone way up so right now as we record this the cost there's actually an index you can look at this so if you were will put a link to show notes but if you Google Freight Fredo's fre IG HT o s index there's an index that tracks this and we have hit a record of 20500 86 average dollars to send a container and that's twice what it was in July of this year and that was twice of what it was in January so we effectively you know in July it was about ten thousand dollars and in January as about five thousand dollars now another interesting Factor here is depending on how many units you put in a container you divide that that unit cost right so if you're putting I'll keep the math easy a thousand units in one of these containers which would be something relatively big you're going to you know you just added effectively another. Yeah. [26:57] Let's see I should have smelled your $15 to the product just in kind of Landing cost with this with this increase so whatever your cost is on a per unit it's gone up effectively 4X since January so that's a factor to consider. [27:15] And what I'm what I'm hearing from people on the ground is you'll go bid and you kind of get get in front of this number right now so you're actually out there bidding today 30,000 to get a container and then you think you'll have one and then they'll say oh you know we need to re-evaluate that because they can the shipping company I'm talking to is now saying is 33,000 so there's this like running auction to get. Space on these boats that are coming over because of some of the rest of the supply chain that will talk about so. [27:46] So how about are so that's that's what it looks like by boat what are you seeing on the air side. Jason: [27:51] Yeah and obviously the most cost-effective way to get all this stuff here is via boat so you'd prefer to do that but when the boats aren't available or if you you need stuff considerably faster like a, in Good Times it takes about about 40 days to move a container from China to the west coast of the US so. Some Goods do come via air and little known fact 50% of Air Freight that comes into the u.s. comes on the bottom of, passenger airplanes right so it's not it's not FedEx and UPS planes flying from China to the US cargo planes it's, it's the bottom of these passenger planes and guess what is not happening right now is. International so there's just way less flights and said there's way less capacity for this Air Freight and so both, because there's more demand for Air Freight because of all the problems with the ocean Freight and because there's less Supply that the air option has you know been dramatically diminished from where it would normally be. Scot: [28:56] Yep so then so then you decide okay well I've got to put on a boat you do that you wait your 40 days and then what you find out is your delayed for a very long time because the heart problem is the u.s. ports are all pretty much maxed out so we've kind of done this very big under-investing in our ports so one of our our biggest one is in Los Angeles at Long Beach and then we have Savannah New York New Jersey and then there's a lot of secondary and tertiary ports but those are the big ones and there's another index that Bloomberg, puts out which is effectively the number of boats that are anchored offshore and you know what you want to you never want to Anchor these things because effectively they're just sitting there all that product just sitting there you know. Doing nothing waiting and the reason the reason why they're sitting there is the ports are they can't unload the products fast enough. [29:55] There's a million reasons why we'll talk about that in a second but this just actually ticked up over there's over 40 boats, and this is interesting I've read a data point this has 74 Los Angeles and 40 I think there's 40 anchored in 30 actively kind of being done there's these Maps if you look at my Twitter feed I just tweeted one to just show you know the port and the congestion there's just all these boats just sitting there waiting to come on shore I have a friend that lives in LA and they can just as they drive around they can just see the boats out there just fact it's very unusual time frame. Jason: [30:30] One of the supply chain guys I work with suggested that we should start a new company Uber barge where we deliver like In and Out Burgers to all these boats that are stuck offshore. Scot: [30:39] Someone someone tried to actually get a helicopter to go out one to get their container often. You can't do that because if you've ever seen these things are stacked like 50 deeper someone is crazy you can't just say I really need that one right there so this this index just ticked over 70 for the first time ever since has been created which is just just crazy. [31:00] And so why is it taking so long to offload the boats well we have under invested in these things and then we have this discontinued problem with the supply chain. Number one there's not enough people to I think it's longshoreman there's a lot of these Union type jobs that you hear about that do this so there's a longshoreman or the ones that offload products for a long time due to covid they were only running like half the number of shifts that used to so they have actually spun that up, they're running more shifts but now there's a shortage of chassis and then because of that. [31:37] You know if you don't have chassis you can still off load the boat but now you have to put it into kind of medium term or short term storage and then all that is full so there's not enough chassis there's not enough truck drivers if there is chassis and then if there's not chassis all the storage is full and then, the one when a product comes off the boat at the Port it can either go by truck or rail the whole rail system is all jammed up as well the this is interesting I read this one article that. Near you in the Joliet train yard which is one of the biggest ones in middle of the country they're so jammed up they have over 8,000 containers stacked there waiting for more training capacity and then some some days the trains are backed up for 25 miles waiting as they're loading these containers on there to try to do this, normal turnaround for a chassis to go at a port to deliver something to where it's going and come back is three and a half days due to all these various shortages that is extended out to 17 days so that's pretty crazy. A big factor in this port jam up is also the shortage of drivers and I call them CDL Drivers which is a commercial driver's license. [32:49] To drive one of these 18-wheelers that's going to carry a container you have to have a you know a certification for a certain type of vehicle there's It's relatively, no time-consuming to go get the certification and the number of drivers that have this is actually decreasing over time as they age out and enough people are coming into the profession so I read one article and this was by one of the one of the professional groups of CDL drivers that there's about 240,000 shortfall of CDL Drivers compared, kind of where the demand is there's about you call it to and 50,000 fewer drivers than they need so we're seeing you know I think I can remember was you or someone but Amazon and Walmart are ineffectively gunfighter these people where they're charged their they're paying crazy signing bonuses and hourly rates and salaries for any kind of truck drivers and so because they're the biggest. Employers of these things they tend to have the better economics and its really starving out other parts of the market as they absorb all the available CDL drivers. Jason: [33:57] Yeah that Walmart's paying a hundred and for a new driver $160,000 a year and eight thousand dollar signing bonus. Scot: [34:04] Yeah yes it's not uncommon uncommon thing to see out there it's pretty crazy, so that's what's going on at the ports it is a hot mess on this side as well so even if you are fortunate enough to get your product here to the US then you know you're looking at probably an extra 40 days I think is kind of you know what everyone's saying right now and that's average it can take a lot longer the LA Port is so jammed up that people are are they're rerouting you know rerouting boats across the sand getting them to other other ports but there are no like there's one in Georgia and it's the Savannah one and it's getting backed up I just saw they authorized building this this kind of effectively opening up a big giant parking area to put containers and that's going to give them some more storage capacity but you know where if you add up those, here we are you know in October and you start adding these things together the the holidays pretty much baked at this point right there's you maybe have 15 to 20 days of window here for stuff you already ordered. 80 days ago to kind of get here but none of this stuff is going to get fixed fast that's going to be part of the problem. Jason: [35:17] Yeah yeah if you follow the earning calls like Nike for example like dramatically lowered their guidance and they said Hey look it's it's cost four times as much to get a container of shoes here and the container takes twice as long to get here, and so we're just not going to have the supply to hit our original guidance and and Nikes better this than a lot of other people so it's a. [35:41] Pretty prominent problem and then there's all these secondary impacts right so you mentioned the math of the container right like you'd like to fill up that 40-foot container with Goods if your goods only take up 90%. Ordinarily you'd put someone else's Goods in the last 10% to try to make it more. Cost effective and efficient and share those costs but when the unloading is so gummed up what you don't want to do is have a secondary process where that container comes off the boat has to get re packed your stuff goes One Way their stuff goes another way, so people are actually shipping containers less full than they normally would which is entirely counterintuitive for what you would expect. The boats are all slowing down because they can use less gas to come here and 80 days then to come here in 40 days because there's no place to unload them. Um and the the supply chain guys I'm like we've been helping a lot of retailers hire truckers lately and they kind of summarize it real simply like the average commercial truck driver was 55 years old with multiple comorbidities a bunch of them. Retired and all the trucking schools that can teach people to get these licenses shut down for covid so there were no new licenses being issued for like. [36:54] Year and so there's just this this huge acute problem. And then you know without those truck drivers with the train problems and Barge problems of your on the Mississippi there's just like no place to move all those goods. You mentioned people are moving the boats from from some ports to secondary ports. That helps somewhat but the biggest cargo ships can't even fit in these ports right so I Long Beach the one of the most advanced Sports we have certainly the most advanced on the West Coast, um [37:27] Can't take the two biggest class of ships it can only take the third biggest class of ships and then as soon as you divert that ship to Portland instead of Long Beach. The the that class of ships won't won't fit there and so like there's there's a limited option to just move the stuff around so we're just we're gummed up like never before and most scary of all Gap and their earnings call kind of said like Hey we're loading our guidance and we're going to very lumpy inventory and we don't see any alleviation of these inventory challenges until at least 2020 3. Scot: [38:06] Yeah in the Auto World we're having a huge problem here where there's a chip shortage and then. [38:14] Another problem is you spend down these factories they don't just get spun back up because all the component parts are you know they stop ordering them and then those factories and everything so so even as chips are starting to come in a lot of vehicles can't be made because there's some other component that now is stuck in one of these containers that that were talking about I read this other interesting article where Coca-Cola has several of their bottling facilities that are down waiting on replacement parts so they went and basically least 20 or 40 bulk ships they didn't even worry about getting containers and they just jumped onto those ships the pieces they need to make their factories work and and are bring him over in this kind of crazy never done before way for a big company. Jason: [38:58] Yeah and I guess that that's one last point on this supply chain thing. It definitely is favoring the biggest players in every industry right so if you're the you know the biggest receivers of goods in the US. You're still being impacted by all of this but you're first in line for what capacity does exist and you you mentioned the games that the Brokers are playing with the price of containers that's going to happen a lot more to the independent shipper than it is the you know number one or number two shipper for that port and so. Well this this is a pain for every retailer in America it's going to be less painful to Walmart and Amazon then it's going to be to the, the medium-sized specialty retailer for. [39:49] And I was just going to point out I think you saw this as well as got but like Salesforce kind of put together a holiday forecast and they looked at all these supply chain problems and they're estimating, that this is going to add about 233 billion dollars in extra supply chain cost to holiday sales for the US so that's. Going to come like straight out of margins basically or or drive more inflation. Scot: [40:13] Yeah that's for the products to get here there's this another side of that equation where which is the opportunity cost right because you know. There's not gonna be a lot of exciting merchandise on the Shelf so we're what's opportunity cost of that we'll have to kind of. We'll get to that I guess we talked about forecast so what what holiday behaviors are feeding into this. Jason: [40:34] Yeah so tricky this one is there wild swings both ways right so you think if you remember at the beginning of covid there. Fundamental changes that happen people spend a lot less on travel they spend a lot less on restaurants they spend a lot more on their homes and they spent a lot more grocery stores right and so then as, people got more comfortable as people start getting vaccinated as infection rates are going down we started seeing all those things swing back right and you started seeing, a lot more bookings that are being be you saw a lot more Airline reservations you saw a lot more traffic coming to stores and you certainly saw a lot more people going back to restaurants. Then Delta hit. And we saw a dip again and people started returning to the the the kind of earlier covid behaviors not as dramatically as the first wave. [41:25] You kind of had a second wave and so predicting which of those, behaviors are going to be at the at the peak for holiday is really hard right now so retailers are looking at consumer sentiment and Doug mcmillon in his investor call he's like hey. Our consumer has told a strongly they want to have a normal holiday that they want to sit down with their family and have a meal, they want to travel they want to do the normal things and there's a strong desire and that if it is remotely safe they will do it and Doug's I kind of under his breath comment was. [42:05] Even if it's not safe they're probably going to do it right so, his viewing is there's there's so much fatigue in all of these like covid change behaviors that were going to see a significant return, you know closer to pre covid behaviors but you know we are we are seeing some signs go the other way, in the u.s. store traffic never fully recovered we are still down about ten percent versus pretty covid levels in China store traffic totally recovered and then Delta hit and store traffic drop back down, 30% below pre-pandemic levels and so since China has historically been about 4 months ahead of us. That that would predict that we're going to see another drop in. Um store traffic which again doesn't mean people won't spend it means they're going to buy more online instead of in store and that exacerbates all of The Last Mile problems that we talked about last year and we're going to talk about it. [43:09] Again this year so it's really risky to predict. What's going to happen with the coded behaviors people were starting to buy a lot of clothes again after having not buying clothes in here and now the closed sales are slowing down and then we talked about. Apparel is one of the categories most impacted by all these supply chain issues so there just may not be close to buy and so really hard to predict that stuff. Um but what I can tell you is retailers now have a couple of reasons to desperately get you to shop earlier right one reason is they're not going to have very much stuff and they don't want to be the Grinch that caused you to miss Christmas so they desperately want you to come in early, and give yourself the best chance to get the stuff you want so, the every retailer is more loudly than ever before trying to incentivise and entice customers to shop early. [44:03] Also if this ends up being another digital Christmas where people shop a lot more online than they do in stores, we have a huge problem with the last mile we don't have enough capacity in FedEx ups and u.s. post office to deliver twice as many packages over holiday, and so we need to spread that those those orders out over more days and so for all of those reasons we're seeing retailers start their sales earlier than ever so. To kind of paint you a promotional picture Amazon Prime day normally is in summer it historically celebrated Amazon's birthday which is in July. So then the pandemic kids they can't have a July sale so they have an October sale and it went really well. So this year they went back to Summer but they went to earlier summer they had the sale in June and a lot of us think they did it earlier in June for one of two reasons either they hate their own C fo and wanted him to have to talk. On earnings calls about the sale being in a different quarter every year for the last three years or. They were having a sale earlier to make room for a second big sale they intend to have this year during holiday to kind of repeat the success of. [45:11] Of holiday Prime Day last year and we haven't seen any all the announcements yet but Amazon has already announced a 30 day. Beauty and personal care sale starting in October of this year Target match that and said hey we're going to start our deal days in October, and we're price-matching for the whole holiday so if if you don't believe us and you think we're just making a joke about these early sales and you think there's going to be better sales waiter know if you buy it early will guarantee you, that will match any lower prices that you see anywhere for the rest of holiday so targets leaning heavily into that. And we think most retailers are going to launch their sales. Earlier than ever before to try to pull in these these early Shoppers because of all the supply chain and inflation issues. The sales aren't going to be as good as they usually are like that what used to be 40 percent off is going to be 25% off but what deals they do have are going to be earlier in the year to try to drive those, those sales earlier. [46:21] And people aren't going to get everything they want they're going to be limited inventory and so what's going to happen people are going to get more gift cards people are going to celebrate the holiday later and we're going to sell more stuff in January January is always a good holiday month anyway but January is going to be disproportionately large this year because of the lumpy supply chain think so, if you think of holiday as generally like being a strong peak in October between that that the kind of turkey five, this holiday more than ever before that spending starting in October and is going to last all the way through January. Scot: [46:58] And then as we get to the last mile we're definitely have another ship again so we've got we haven't increased our capacity hardly any because you can't really buy Vans and the everyone's renting Vans and there's just this fixed number of biliary vehicles and if we're going to have this Less store traffic even more e-commerce than last year even if you throw you know maybe. [47:23] Low middle digit low single digits on there like five or 7% or something well we effectively had 98, we can only deliver like 97% of the packages last year so it's going to make it a now will only be a little deliver maybe 90% of the packages so it's going to be really tough delivery, set up coming into the holiday. Jason: [47:46] I think the like some data points I saw the that are alarming like so number one. All the Fulfillment centers have an average turnover rate of like four hundred percent a year right so they're having a hard time hiring people and keeping people. FedEx in their earnings call said that like we just can't staff some of our distribution hubs so we're having to reroute packages in a less efficient manner, because for example we only have sixty percent of our labor force in our Portland Hub right so ordinarily they would try to, be at a hundred and twenty percent of their labor in these hubs for holiday with all this seasonal labor and this year. [48:24] They can't even fulfill all the permanent jobs they have so there's not going to be a seasonal Flex. For the main carriers you know the Retailer's do a lot of seasonal hiring for stores but they're prioritizing the seasonal hiring for their fulfillment centers over the stores because they're so. Worried about enough labor to fulfill all these packages and then you know when when FedEx and UPS have less capacity. What do they do they smartly charge more for it so we've seen gas surcharges we've seen holiday surcharges and and they're now announcing their rate hikes for January and FedEx announced the largest rate hike they've had in the last ten years so on average, it's almost six percent as 5.9 percent rate hike it varies wildly depending on the class of service so some kinds of shippers are going to get hit much harder. Um and just like last year all of the the big shippers have a quota and they're not going to be allowed to ship more more packages. The maybe one silver lining in this is that. Because readers are likely to be more successful in spreading the demand out this year than last year that's going to help a little bit and. [49:37] As a as challenges everyone's going to be with the capacity last year there were political challenges that that particularly got the US Post Office sideways which is a big part of this whole chain. And they don't anticipate that that will be as bad this year and so there is absolutely going to be ship again in 2.0 this year with the, the The Last Mile but the most of the analysts I'm talking to are saying the first mile is going to be so disrupted this year that the last mile is going to seem. Less severe in comparison whereas last year the the holiday challenges were all about the last mile. Scot: [50:16] Yeah and you know the double-edged sword of there not being enough product is maybe there just won't be enough product and it won't you should be getting but if whatever there is is going to get jammed up I think. Jason: [50:29] Yeah so that's a great transition to so like that's a lot of Doom and Gloom what's going to happen for Holiday should we all be shorting the retail stocks like what's. What's going to happen. And spoiler alert I don't know well we'll talk a little bit about our educated guesses but maybe before we do we can walk through some of the the forecast from the the brave souls that have been willing to share their holiday forecast. Scot: [50:56] Yeah the one the one I saw was from Salesforce and they, they say that e-commerce is going to be up 7% versus kind of that huge surge last year which was like you know fifty percent so they're coming in kind of with a moderate 7% growth which which is done yeah I think that would be the probably the slowest e-commerce growth since 2008-2009 yeah. Jason: [51:24] 2008. Scot: [51:26] Yeah that's that's the one I was tracking and you know when I read through the bullet points it made sense they're definitely putting a pretty wet blanket on things due to the this kind of quote-unquote Supply pain. Jason: [51:38] Yeah and it is tricky so they were the only one I've seen that's done an e-commerce forecast right and I would say that's the most uncertain because. Of we just don't know whether people are going to go back to stores or whether they're going to be worried about health and ordering online when they start having constrained. Um supplies is that gonna. Push them to online more because they can hunt more places or is that going to entice them to go to the store because they can use their eyes to see the inventory for themselves like there's, there's a lot of variability in that e-commerce number but I would remind people even as low as 7 percent sounds its. 7% on top of the huge bases from last year right so it's it's that's not a decline in e-commerce by any means that's a slowing of the increase just as a reminder for. People. But then I did see several like of the other the kind of traditional Consultants put together an overall holiday forecast right so beIN predicted that they were going to they thought holiday was going to be up seven percent from last year. [52:45] Deloitte said that they thought holiday was going to be up between seven and nine percent from last year. And MasterCard said they think holidays going to be up 7.4 percent from last year so. To put all three of those numbers in context those are all huge numbers. Um last year was the best holiday year in 10 years and sales were up 10% but the average is about 6% so saying we're going to grow if. You know these three things kind of all averaged out to about seven percent growth if we're here we go. If all holiday store an e-commerce gross 7% on top of the ten percent from last year, that's a phenomenal holiday and so that says, that these guys are pretty confident that the consumer is going to spend even if they can't find exactly what they want right that the supply chain is going to be painful but that the all the macroeconomic stuff we talked about at the beginning is going to win out and consumers are going to spend a lot of money this holiday I. [53:49] I want to believe this I'm going to be pleasantly surprised if it plays out like that right and my um, the the one caveat I'll say is that us retail is incredibly Diversified right and so for every category that's going to get shellacked by the supply chain or by changes in covid behaviors. Some other category is going to benefit right and so. It is true that the holiday could absolutely hit these numbers like I'll remind people that cars are 25 percent of retail sales gas is another huge chunk of retail sales. Some of these forecasts have those things in some don't some of these forecasts are for November and December some are for November December and January like everybody has a different definition of retail and a different definition of holiday so, you can't really apples-to-apples any of these but I pulled all the US Department of Commerce data and again last year November through January 10 percent growth, average of the last ten 10 years is about 6% growth so 7% growth is a. A terrific number and. I don't know I could see it happening if it happens it's going to be because there was a we had the most Monster January ever because I just don't think there's going to be enough Goods on the Shelf in November and December to do. Scot: [55:17] Yeah I'll take a so I think the winners are going to be the companies that have the most power and smartest supply chain operators so I think Walmart and Amazon. Maybe Target I don't know them as well do they have a you think they feel like they have a pretty dialed in. Jason: [55:33] They Walmart and Target both in their earnings said like look our inventory isn't going to be isn't where we want it it's not going to be where we want it but we we in general are feeling good and neither one lowered its guidance for holiday in their last earnings call so they both felt that they were going to weather the storm but you know below that you go look at like a Bed Bath and Beyond and they're like look there's no way we can hit our numbers with the supply we're gonna get. Scot: [56:00] Will they miss this quarter and if you miss this quarter you're just going to get worse the next quarter Seth. Jason: [56:04] Exactly exactly. Scot: [56:06] It's a poop storm now and it's gonna be a bloodbath and in 90 days yes I think I think if I kind of do the calculus on that I think those three guys win I think everyone else is net negative and. You know I don't think those three are big enough let's say they represent Amazon's kind of half of e-commerce only think about e-commerce the rest of retail is. That's your bailiwick yeah Amazon's half, yeah I could see it being flat to down five percent because. Amazon Walmart and Target doing decent isn't it be enough for to make up for the whole that it's created there so yeah so that's kind of, where I see it it's going to be the big get bigger and stronger and because they you know they have Prime, they have more technologies that this has been on their radar longer they have more containers they have more trucks they have more dollars to spend on solving these problems they're going to be the winners so that's going to be you know it is going to be I think a bad year for the small medium sized business the incumbent brands that are just getting their legs under them and you know having to kind of have a Miss effectively miss a holiday because you couldn't get a bunch of product it's going to be be a rough rough year for everybody. Jason: [57:25] Yeah no I in a way it's going to be the exact opposite of last year when covid first hit nobody obviously had Advance warning or was prepared for this and so a secondary impact was a bunch of eCommerce sites that didn't traditionally get a lot of consumer visits, got a lot of Trials because Amazon constrained FBA in Amazon head supply chain problems right and so suddenly you were looking to get your instant pot from Bed Bath & Beyond suddenly a bunch of people are looking to see what eBay had, that hasn't shopped eBay in five or ten years right so a lot of those kind of second-tier eCommerce sites got extra visits as people were. Trying new address the supply chain shortages this year I think we're going to have exactly the opposite there's going to be a ton of supply chain shortages there's going to be a lot of, news stories every day about supply chain shortages and the big players with the best infrastructure in the most advanced supply chain planning, like the Amazons and Walmarts of the world and and targets, are going to be the winners and it's going to be a lot harder for those specialty retailers and Regional retailers to compete unfortunately. Scot: [58:41] Yeah I think that that is the setup and we will continue so that hopefully that gives everyone an idea of the big talk in the industry and you were just at an industry event is this what everyone was talking about Jason. Jason: [58:55] Yeah yeah slightly less than I would have expected I mean it was a huge topic everyone understands the supply chain thing. I do think it was the first conversation a lot of you know customer experience folks and people that you know we're kind of had their head down in their own in their own Silo you know we're suddenly getting their eyes open to the fact that like. Yeah your customer experience is going to stink at there's no products on the. Scot: [59:20] Mix the CX person's job a lot easier they just you know just take the holiday off. Jason: [59:26] Yeah and so you know it is interesting though again like. [59:31] You know we may we may hit the top line numbers and it may be from a lot less items that sold more expensively. The you know category there's going to be winning and losing categories by far and again because of the consumer health and the supply chain issues, the supply chain for diamonds is looking a lot better than the supply chain for Budget shoes and so you know you just may see what jury where you know you say you sell a few things for a while, do better you know where there's extra scarcity then you know some of these low-margin high-volume consumer goods and so I think. [1:00:08] My key takeaways for everyone is it's going to be a very lumpy like the averages will be interesting we should all follow them but but every. Um retailer and every category is going to experience a very different holiday and there just is more uncertainty than there has been in the last 30 years of retail so like for anyone, to definitively say this is how it is going to play out I think is super risky because there's so many things that could go either way at this point, will consumers you know by another toy when they can't get their first choice will consumers go to a restaurant you know or not will consumers take a vacation or not. You know all of these these will they pay 5% more for something or not like there's just so much uncertainty that you know this is going to be. Holiday that really rewards people that do good scenario planning and are prepared for any eventuality. Scot: [1:01:06] Absolutely and we will keep you posted here on the Jason Scott show but hopefully this gives everyone kind of a framework to work within and we'll be updating various components of the supply pain as we get closer to Holiday. Jason: [1:01:22] And until next week happy commercing!