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“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” — Luke 12:15In an age of instant gratification, getting what we want has never been easier, even if we can't afford it. But as “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) services become increasingly popular, they're quietly reshaping our relationship with money, debt, and even contentment. Let's explore how these programs work, why they're spiritually and financially dangerous, and how Scripture invites us into a better way.What Is Buy Now, Pay Later?Originally used for large purchases like furniture or electronics, BNPL services now allow consumers to split nearly any purchase into multiple payments—even cheeseburgers. DoorDash, for example, lets customers finance their food in four installments. The convenience may seem harmless, but it can mask deeper issues.Companies like Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm, Zip, Sezzle, and PayPal offer these options at checkout. According to Experian, more than 80% of U.S. shoppers have used BNPL. The ease is attractive, but the long-term impact can be devastating.BNPL makes it seem like you're not going into debt, but that's exactly what's happening. Small recurring payments across multiple platforms add up fast, leading to overdraft fees, financial stress, and, in many cases, high interest rates—some as high as 36% for missed or extended payments.A $60 DoorDash meal split into four $15 payments doesn't seem bad—until you do it for every meal. Or take a $3,000 couch bought with a BNPL plan: one missed payment, and that couch could ultimately cost $8,000 due to fees and interest.Scripture's Warnings About DebtThe Bible doesn't shy away from warning us about the dangers of debt. Proverbs 22:7 tells us, “The borrower is the slave of the lender.” Debt isn't just a financial issue—it can become an emotional and spiritual burden, dividing our attention and devotion.In Luke 12:15, Jesus reminds us that “life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Yet BNPL feeds the lie that more stuff equals more satisfaction. Instead of trusting God to provide, we try to manufacture comfort and control through impulsive spending.Why are we tempted to buy now and pay later? Often, it's not out of need, but out of insecurity, impatience, or discontentment. Paul models a better path in Philippians 4:11–13: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content...I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”True contentment doesn't come from a checkout screen—it comes from trusting the Lord to provide, even when the budget feels tight.A Better Way: Practical and Spiritual WisdomSo, how do we resist the pull of BNPL and grow in godly contentment?Practically:Build margin. Save up for purchases ahead of time.Budget for “wants.” Use a separate category or envelope system.Set spending limits. Use cash or debit card to help avoid overspending.Spiritually:Examine your heart. Ask: Am I trusting God, or just trying to feel better?Pursue contentment. Let God define your enough.Practice gratitude. Train your heart to see God's provision in what you already have.Freedom to Live GenerouslySaying no to unnecessary debt frees us to say yes to generosity. When we live with open hands and open hearts, we reflect the freedom we have in Christ—freedom from striving, fear, and scarcity. And that's far better than four easy payments.So next time you see a “Pay in 4” button, pause. Ask yourself: Do I really need this? Can I pay for it in full? And does this reflect trust in God, or just in a payment plan?Wise stewardship begins with contentment, and contentment begins with Christ.On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:My husband and I are sending our son on a five-week mission trip to Scotland. We're debt-free and want our kids to stay that way. I'm hesitant to open a credit card, but what's the best, safest way to give him access to money while he's overseas?We recently sold our home at a profit, bought a new one, and are now debt-free. However, the new home needs repairs, and we still have a mortgage. Should we tithe on the profit from the home sale, or use those funds for the house needs?I'm a recently retired teacher with two annuities—one worth $19,000 and the other about $13,000. I've just opened an IRA and wonder if I should roll the annuities into it, or if there might be a better strategy.I've inherited a large amount of cash-valued property and need guidance on how to manage it wisely, especially to minimize potential tax liability.We paid off our home in October 2024. Do we need the deed and title to protect ourselves from fraud, or is it handled automatically?Resources Mentioned:Faithful Steward: FaithFi's New Quarterly Magazine (Become a FaithFi Partner)Christian Credit CounselorsWisdom Over Wealth: 12 Lessons from Ecclesiastes on Money (Pre-Order)Look At The Sparrows: A 21-Day Devotional on Financial Fear and AnxietyRich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich FoolFind a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA) or Certified Christian Financial Counselor (CertCFC)FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions most days at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on the Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. Visit our website at FaithFi.com where you can join the FaithFi Community and give as we expand our outreach.
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - If Target's new in-store chatbot is really the “sh*tbot” Forbes makes it out to be (Source: Forbes) - Best Buy's push into video (Source: Chain Store Age) - Simbe Robotics' new remote planogram monitoring solution (Source: Grocery Dive) - Google's big Chrome cookie pivot (Source: WSJ) - And closed with a look at whether any retailers should let Amazombies, aka Amazon package returners, into their stores (Source: Yahoo News) There's all that, plus A&M's John Clear stops by to give us 5 Insightful Minutes on what retailers can do to combat shrinkage, along with teenage dirtbags, french fries, and how much Anne and Chris both despise putting fitted sheets on their beds. Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, A&M's Mohit Mohal and Chris Disa, joined Chris and Anne to discuss: - Amazon rolling outs it generative AI assistant, “Rufus,” to all shoppers (Source: Chain Store Age) - Walmart's wide lead in retail media (Source: Marketing Dive) - Macy's ending its acquisition talks (Source: Retail Dive) - Hy-Vee rolling out ESLs with the VusionGroup (Source: Progressive Grocer) - And closed with a look at Petaluma, California's new city-wide reusable cup pilot with Starbucks and many others (Source: Chain Store Age) There's all that, plus how AI could have improved our college dating lives, the inconsistent weights of Chipotle's burrito bowls, and even more reasons to be scared about facial recognition. To get The Cappy, head here: https://www.amazon.com/coolest-Beverage-Opener-Closer-devices/dp/B077GHSL1H/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DD9QZFK2PED8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.a8vieecwLVdSDip1YhvX599LDlwxglIwZ8R5sPSL6yNh3BopFXw5wgglO-4rSYp4uqToQUS1PvM4dq8SFK1rdzEbEGE-CVxl5lzjpaxGbRok9bHxTubTmD9pC2TEg9nHx-VfhoSBnqIvY_h0kj8DrzhBDqIhutweZQWTeWtLloedxCTFyi5d4XVSVi9TPv1_6QLyQRpG-PqHN-3xNPzJ3AAgobdnmpDcmpiE4MUyTNz8elupetIXPyXLvvL4fTlctuoZtc57sjJob5uk_Al3ei4srDdkO7msUNy-TZMrSZw.l2KyosrngOgbjj7glCq7kIpLUyo2P5TftiUyCuuh-yI&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+cappy+beverage+can+closers+%26+openers&qid=1721166396&sprefix=the+cappy%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-1 Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - The Saks and Neiman Marcus merger and what to expect from Amazon's involvement in it (Source: NPR) - Co-op opting to use “Store Assist” from Walmart Commerce Technologies (Source: PYMNTS) - Circle K gamifying employee training via iPads (Source: Chain Store Age) - Hy-Vee enabling its online shoppers to pay for their groceries with Venmo (Source: Chain Store Age) - And closed with a “love it or leave it” discussion about Walmart and McDonald's working to secure college credit for the hours their employees work in their stores (Source: NPR) There's all that, plus Taco Bell retirement communities, drone mishaps, and the best way to toast a marshmallow before putting it into a s'more. Music by hooksounds.com
The Investing Power Hour is live-streamed every Thursday on the Chit Chat Stocks YouTube channel at 1:30 PM EST. This week we discussed: (00:00) Introduction and Agenda (02:57) Discussion on Nike's Underwhelming Quarter (15:51) Ryan's Small Cap Pick of the Week: Nobility Homes (33:18) Analysis of Sezzle (36:25) Introduction and Discussion of Small-Cap Stocks (38:05) Defining the Circle of Competence and Preferred Industries (40:20) Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Micro-Cap Stocks (47:22) Advantages of Large-Cap Stocks and Market Stability ***************************************************** Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ChitChatStocks Follow us on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/chitchatstocks Follow us on Substack: https://chitchatstocks.substack.com/ ********************************************************************* Options are not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Option investors can rapidly lose the value of their investment in a short period of time and incur permanent loss by expiration date. Certain complex options strategies carry additional risk. There are additional costs associated with option strategies that call for multiple purchases and sales of options, such as spreads, straddles, among others, as compared with a single option trade. Prior to buying or selling an option, investors must read and understand the “Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options”, also known as the options disclosure document (ODD) which can be found at: www.theocc.com/company-information/documents-and-archives/options-disclosure-document Supporting documentation for any claims will be furnished upon request. If you are enrolled in our Options Order Flow Rebate Program, The exact rebate will depend on the specifics of each transaction and will be previewed for you prior to submitting each trade. This rebate will be deducted from your cost to place the trade and will be reflected on your trade confirmation. Order flow rebates are not available for non-options transactions. To learn more, see our Fee Schedule, Order Flow Rebate FAQ, and Order Flow Rebate Program Terms & Conditions. Options can be risky and are not suitable for all investors. See the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options to learn more. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. See public.com/#disclosures-main for more information. ********************************************************************* FinChat.io is The Complete Stock Research Platform for fundamental investors. With its beautiful design and institutional-quality data, FinChat is incredibly powerful and easy to use. Use our LINK and get 15% off any premium plan: https://finchat.io/chitchat/?lmref=J3bklw ********************************************************************* Disclosure: Chit Chat Stocks hosts and guests are not financial advisors, and nothing they say on this show is formal advice or a recommendation.
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Amazon's plans to copycat Shein and Temu (Source: CNBC) - Target lowering its in-store theft threshold from $100 to $50 (Source: Bloomberg) - Tesco piloting on-pack, scannable QR codes (Source: Grocery Gazette) - Tiptop adding the new wrinkle of trade-ins to its BNPL offering (Source: Digital Transaction) - And we closed with yet another look at the future of smart carts through the lens of Shoprite's further expansion of its Instacart Caper Cart pilot to more stores (Source: Retail Dive) There's all that, plus this month's OmniStar (congrats Diana Marshall of Sam's Club), how Chris would improve the Delta Sky Club, dating app wingmen, and who Anne would most want to call the play-by-play of a 10-minute recap video of her life. Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, A&M's Kelly Carey and Jeff Dwyer joined Chris and Anne to discuss: - Whether Target is making a smart move in rolling out generative AI so quickly across its store base (Source: Target Press Release) - What Netflix has to get right for its “Netflix House” concept to work (Source: The Verve) - Unilever's new partnership with Microsoft to expand its use of quantum computing (Consumer Goods Technology) - The long-term value and viability of a generative AI Amazon Alex (Source: Reuters) - And we closed with a discussion of whether we should buy or sell Target's new partnership with Shopify (Source: CNBC) There's all that, plus Ovative's Chuck Anderson-Weir stops by to give us 5 Insightful Minutes on his company's latest Enterprise Marketing Return Power Rankings, and a lighting round filled with questions about postage stamps, Tom Brady, and spicy romance novels. Link to power rankings: ovative.com/insights/2024-media-power-rankings/ Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, recorded live from the lovely Marriott in Salt Lake City, and sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Whether Kohl's new return drop is a sign of an ongoing identity crisis within the retailer (Source: Retail Dive) - TikTok going after Google (and Amazon before it) with image search (Source: TechCrunch) - Instacart plugging into YouTube shopping ads (Source: Grocery Dive) - McDonalds calling it quits, for now, on automated order taking at the drive-thru (Source: Restaurant Business) - And they closed with a story on how adults are buying more toys for themselves than they are for pre-schoolers (Source: Retail Dive) There's all that, plus Microsoft's Rajen Raval of Microsoft stops by to give us 5 Insightful Minutes on improving supply chains with AI, and Anne and Chris get absolutely wacky with taxes in honor of Avalara and their upcoming work at the Outdoor Retailer conference. Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, recorded live from CommerceNext 2024, and sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Ownit AI, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Walmart rolling out electronic shelf labels to nearly half its U.S. stores (Source: Retail Dive) - TJX asking its sales associates to wear body cameras (Source: CNN) - Tesco building its own third-party digital marketplace (Source: Retail Gazette) - IKEA hiring employees to work inside of Roblox (Source: Marketing Dive) - And closed with a look at Starbucks' decision to open its own in-house production studio (Source: Adweek) There's all that, plus Capri Suns, Dr. Pepper, and some really spicy enchiladas. Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - What Wayfair has to get right in the opening of its first large-format store (Source: Chain Store Age) - TikTok lowering the thresholds for creators to earn seller commissions (Source: Bloomberg) - Walmart adding free pet telehealth to Walmart+ (Source: CNBC) - Schnucks partnering with Ibotta (Source: Chain Store Age) - And closed with a lively debate on the value of Google's new AI tool that let's advertisers showcase clothing on various models and body types (Source: Wired) There's all that, plus A&M's Joanna Rangarajan stops by for 5 Insightful Minutes on Shein and fast fashion, and we've also talk head transplants, beach vibes, and why Chris thinks he is now a dead ringer for Mikhail Gorbachev. Music by hooksounds.com
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Truett Horne and Jeremy Levine discussed: Lego Tying Sustainability Goals To Employee Bonuses For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/38T1iAyglTM
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Truett Horne and Jeremy Levine discussed: Hims Offering Wegovy For $199 Per Month
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Truett Horne and Jeremy Levine discussed: Buying Or Selling: Target's Price Cuts For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/38T1iAyglTM
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Truett Horne and Jeremy Levine discussed: If GoPuff Price Matching Aldi Is Sustainable? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/38T1iAyglTM
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Truett Horne and Jeremy Levine discussed: Walmart Expanding Neighborhood Market In More Ways Than One For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/38T1iAyglTM
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, Mirakl, and Sezzle, A&M's Truett Horne and Jeremy Levine joined Chris and Anne to discuss: - The potential ramifications of Target's decision to cut prices on roughly 5,000 items (Source: Retail Dive) - Walmart's two new (and much larger) Neighborhood Market grocery stores (Source: Grocery Dive) - Gopuff's decision to price match Aldi in the U.K. (Source: Internet Retailing) - Lego's new plan to tie employee compensation to its carbon reduction goals (Source: ESG Dive) - And closed with a look at how Hims' new $199 per month Wegovy copycat could impact food retailing strategies (Source: Bloomberg) There's all that, plus chicken or fish at Long John Silver's, Costco birthday parties, and the candies at the bottom of grandma's purse that we all loved most as kids. P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: How Big Of A Deal Walmart's Restructuring Announcement Is For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/5NLe5lpZPJ4
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: Exchange Zones: Will They Or Won't They Take Off In The States? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/5NLe5lpZPJ4
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: Best Buy's Redesigned Mobile App For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/5NLe5lpZPJ4
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: How Automatic Age Verification Comes To Self-checkout, In Of All Places, Germany? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/5NLe5lpZPJ4
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: Are They Buying Or Selling: JCP Opening New Stores? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/5NLe5lpZPJ4
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Shoptalk's Ben Miller stopped by to guest host with Chris and Anne as they discussed: - Walmart's reported job cuts and back-to-office push (Source: WSJ) - The first-ever exchange zone in Atlanta from Harbor Lockers (Source: Harbor Lockers Press Release) - Best Buy's new mobile app features (Source: Best Buy Press Release) - Diebold Nixdorf bringing automatic age verification to self-checkout in Germany (Source: Retail Dive) - And closed with a look at whether JCP can be successful via new store growth (Source: Retail Dive) There's all that, plus Peugeots, Belfast bike messenger must haves, and the posh retail store in which Ben would most like to live for a full year. Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Target expanding its wholesale relationship with Hudson's Bay (Source: BNN Bloomberg) - Instacart and Uber Eats' intriguing new partnership (Source: Joint Instacart and Uber Eats Press Release) - Walmart's new in-store AI tools for produce and apparel (Source: CNBC) - Happy Returns enabling Shein returns at Forever 21 stores (Source: Supply Chain Dive) - And closed with a look at whether mobile ordering is one idea Starbucks wishes it could disinvent (Source: CX Dive) There's all that, plus NYC apartments furnished to looks like Skittles, beer ballads, and the Monopoly token Anne thinks she resembles the most. P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FASTFIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use “FASTFIVE” P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Walmart's out-of-nowhere decision to shut down all 51 of its health centers (Source: Bloomberg) - Best Buy's “groundbreaking” new partnership with CNET (Source: Best Buy Press Release) - Tesco bringing EagleAI's gamification to its loyalty program (Source: Tesco Press Release) - Walmart launching its first new private label food line in two decades, aka bettergoods (Source: Bloomberg) - And closed with a look at why Nordstrom launching a new digital marketplace may just be the Mirakl it needs (Source: Retail Dive) There's all that, plus this month's OmniStar (congrats Ryan Nalette of Bob's Discount Furniture), Chris V4.7, the vagaries of selling live chickens, and why jalapeños should be branded like Dole Pineapples or Chiquita Bananas. P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FASTFIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use “FASTFIVE” P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Walmart's new BNPL offering (Source: CNBC) - Grubhub's new Mercato partnership (Source: Chain Store Age) - Amazon's new lost cost subscription grocery delivery plan (Source: Reuters) - Instagram getting AI-powered search (Source: Daily Star) - And closed with a look at the WSJ report last week that Amazon was running a secret operation to gain intel on its rivals (Source: WSJ) There's all that, plus Milwaukee hotels, death by lady bugs, and grooming tips for hairless dachshunds. P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FASTFIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use “FASTFIVE” P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Walmart Canada's big store of the future reveal (Source: Canadian Grocer) - Gopuff's debut of "Powered by Gopuff" (Source: Chain Store Age) - A NYC Chicken restaurant that has replaced its cashiers with Zoom (Source: 404 Media) - Aldi retrofitting a store to become checkout-free with Grabango (Source: Chain Store Age) - Their perspectives on the Amazon Just Walk Out vs. Dash Cart debate (Source: GeekWire) - And A&M's Chad Lusk stopped by for 5 Insightful Minutes on the state of U.S. consumer sentiment (Source: A&M CRG) There's all that, plus Oreos vs. Softbatch cookies, whether Chris would like to drive a cab more in NYC or Paris, and if Anne agrees with Chicagoans who despise putting ketchup on their hot dogs. P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FASTFIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use “FASTFIVE” P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Retail Fast Five news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - The real reasons why Amazon would pull its Just Walk Out Technology out of its Fresh grocery stores and Whole Foods store (Source: Payments Dive) - Target installing cameras above its self-checkout machines (Source: Bloomberg) - Kroger closing its three e-commerce facilities (Source: Grocery Dive) - Costco offering Ozempic to some of its members (Source: CNN) - And closed with a look at Home Depot's recent acquisition of SRS (Source: Reuters) There's all that, plus this month's OmniStar, gig driver nightmares, and all the new ways to screw up a burrito. P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FASTFIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to https://commercenext.com/conference?utm_source=OMNITALK&utm_medium=social and don't forget to use code “FASTFIVE” P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Benjamin Lowden and Abhinav Chandra discussed: How Scared Google And Amazon Should Be About Tiktok Search Commissions For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/17eGHgSsPSA
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Benjamin Lowden and Abhinav Chandra discussed: If Walmart Is Adding Self-Checkout Perks To The Growing List Of Walmart + Benefits? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/17eGHgSsPSA
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Benjamin Lowden and Abhinav Chandra discussed: What It Means For Nike As They Go Back To The Well On Wholesaling For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/17eGHgSsPSA
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Benjamin Lowden and Abhinav Chandra discussed: Which Retailers Would Benefit From Shein's New “Supply Chain As A Service?” For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/17eGHgSsPSA
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Benjamin Lowden and Abhinav Chandra discussed: What Amazon's New Same-Day RX Delivery Means For Walgreens, CVS, And Others For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/17eGHgSsPSA
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, A&M's Abhinav Chandra and Ben Lowden joined Chris and Anne to discuss: - TikTok paying creators commissions based on how well their content shows up in search (Source: The Verge) - The serendipitous position Walmart+ affords Walmart in regards to self-checkout (Source: Supermarket News) - Nike's refocus on wholesale (Source: Retail Dive) - Shein introducing its “Supply Chain as a Service” offering to U.S. retailers (Source: WSJ) - And closed with an examination of what Amazon same-day pharmacy delivery means for CVS and Walgreens (Source: CNBC) There's all that, plus some pub for our soon to be released podcast with Aldi's VP of National Real Estate that Chris and Anne recorded live at RetailSpaces, college courses on Metallica, and just how much Ben was a true Dungeon & Dragons fan in his youth. P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FASTFIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use FAST FIVE. P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, recorded live from Shoptalk in Las Vegas, and sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Macy's launching their "Bold New Chapter" strategy (Source: Retail Dive) - Target going wholesale with their Cat & Jack line at Hudson's Bay (Source: Retail Dive) - Walmart launching another SaaS play for retailers, "Route Optimization" (Source: Investing.com) - Whether or not Simon's Southdale Mall is the truly the "Mall of the Future" (Source: Wall Street Journal) - And closed with Dollar General and Target cutting back self-checkout (Source: PYMNTS.com and Axios) There's all that, plus the condiments we can't live without, the best Grey's Anatomy category, and what Chris's best birthday party memory is. P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.S. Also, be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Walmart expanding express delivery into the wee hours of the morning (Source: Chain Store Age) - Aldi's aggressive U.S. expansion plans (Source: Fox Business) - Kohl's new partnership with Babies R Us (Source: CNBC) - Michaels bringing its online maker marketplace alive in store (Source: Chain Store Age) - And closed with a look at Wayfair's new marketing campaign and a discussion of what it must get right (and what it must avoid) when it opens its first large format store in Illinois (Source: Marketing Dive) There's all that, plus the new shoe line from Lululemon, the song in which Chris would most like to own stock, and the degree to which cameras inside of an Airbnb freak Anne out. P.S. Don't forget to use our promo code “OMNITALK” to save on your Shoptalk registration. P.P.S. If you are interested in renting out space at Lululemon in the Mall of America (aka where we recorded today's podcast), head here: https://www.partyslate.com/venues/lululemon-mall-of-america-experiential-store P.P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Wendy's about face on surge pricing (Source: KTLA-5) - Target's new paid membership program, Circle 360 (Source: CNBC) - The RealReal's store expansion plans (Source: WSJ) - Sam's Club's new design thinking studio (Source: Chain Store Age) -And closed with an examination of whether Whole Foods' plan to open s smaller stores is, first, a good idea, and, second, if it is an idea that will actually work (Source: Grocery Dive) There's all that, plus cereal for breakfast, our newest OmniStar, and a tip of our cap to all our loyal fans for helping to make this our 1,000 podcast episode! Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne discussed: - Macy's bold decision to close 150 stores (Source: CNBC) - Why Amazon's move to offer scheduled grocery delivery could be one of the most important headlines of the year (Source: Chain Store Age) - Microsoft decision to fortify its Gen AI position by investing in Mistral AI (Source: Fast Company) - Schnucks breaking ground on its smart cart from Instacart pilot (Source: NBC 5 St. Louis) - And closed with an examination of Marc Lore's restaurant startup, Wonder, opening up inside of a Walmart store (Source: Chain Store Age) There's all that, plus Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, imaginary dinner dates with Minka Kelly, and the merits of a fried chicken pizza mashup. P.S. Don't forget to use our promo code “OMNITALK” to save on your Shoptalk registration. P.P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FAST FIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use FAST FIVE. P.P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Joanna Rangarajan and Cassie Ryding discussed: Why Walmart Would Acquire Vizio? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/UJ5nNgAF7Eo
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Joanna Rangarajan and Cassie Ryding discussed: If There's Anything Noteworthy About Dealworthy? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/UJ5nNgAF7Eo
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Joanna Rangarajan and Cassie Ryding discussed: If Bank Loyalty Programs An Untapped Gold Mine For Retail Media Networks? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/UJ5nNgAF7Eo
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Joanna Rangarajan and Cassie Ryding discussed: A 50% SKU Reduction Is Quite Drastic – What's The Rationale? For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/UJ5nNgAF7Eo
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest hosts from the Alvarez & Marsal Consumer and Retail Group Joanna Rangarajan and Cassie Ryding discussed: How Retailers Should Approach Electrification For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/UJ5nNgAF7Eo
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, A&M's Joanna Rangarajan and Cassie Ryding joined Chris and Anne to discuss: - Why in the world Walmart would acquire Vizio (Source: CNBC) - Whether Target's new brand, “dealworthy,” is actually noteworthy (Source: PR Newswire) - Starbucks new loyalty partnership with Bank of America (Source: Chain Store Age) - Hasbro's drastic decision to cut 50% of its skus (Source: Retail Dive) - And closed with a look at Walmart's plans to build a “coast-to-coast” network of electric DC fast chargers (Source: Electrek) There's all that, plus which body parts we would most want scanned at an airport, Mars simulations, and the rising cost of the Tooth Fairy. P.S. Don't forget to use our promo code “OMNITALK” to save on your Shoptalk registration. P.P.S. We are also gearing up for CommerceNext out in NYC in June. Scaled retailers and brands can register for FREE with code “FAST FIVE” in the referral field. Secure your spot now — head to commercenext.com/conference/ and don't forget to use FAST FIVE. P.P.P.S. Be sure to check out all our other podcasts from the past week here, too: https://omnitalk.blog/category/podcast/ P.P.P.P.S. Also be sure to check out our #1 podcast ranking in all of retail on Feedspot Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Avalara's Kris Rabideau stopped by for 5 Insightful Minutes on 2024 tax changes, and Chris and Anne discussed: - The rumors that Target will roll out a paid membership program (Source: Bloomberg) - If IKEA's use of generative AI indicates that generative AI-based search may be more applicable to home furnishings shopping than to other categories (Source: Chain Store Age) - Safeway's move to install more receipt-check gates at self-checkout (Source: Grocery Dive) - Tanger Outlets push into full-price beauty retailing (Source: Glossy) - And closed with look at SpartanNash's robot expansion plans and what they mean for the future of robotics (Source: Progressive Grocer) There's all that, plus Tiger Woods, Jessica Rabbit, and the saying Chris would most want embossed on a a candy Valentine's Day heart. P.S. All you retail tax junkies out there can read Avalara's full report on the most important retail tax changes for 2024 by clicking here: https://avlr.co/3SbMg5i P.P.S. Don't forget to use our promo code “OMNITALK” to save on your Shoptalk registration. Music by hooksounds.com
In this week's Omni Talk Fast Five retail news roundup, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Wiliot, Avalara, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris and Anne were live from Manifest as they discussed: Amazon's new AI-assistant Rufus Grabango's large scale autonomous store installation with Aldi near Chicago Gap Inc.'s hiring of Zac Posen Lowe's and J. Crew's recent Apple Vision Pro endeavors And closed with a look at Starbucks new late night delivery partnership with Gopuff There's all that, plus delivery memories, barracudas, and what Anne would make her husband do if she could control him via an implanted chip in his brain. Music by hooksounds.com
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: Walmart Store Managers Making Up To $400K/Year For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/hjehOT4ddMM
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: Everseen's new self-checkout data For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/hjehOT4ddMM
In the latest edition of Omni Talk's Retail Fast Five sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Avalara, Wiliot, TGW, and Sezzle, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and guest host Ben Miller of Shoptalk discussed: What All These Layoffs Mean For The Future For the full episode head here: https://youtu.be/hjehOT4ddMM
EP316 - Annual Predictions 2024 Jason visited the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Pea Ridge, Arkansas featuring drone delivery. Here is a video for those interested. 2023 Predictions Recap Jason: At least 2 retail bankruptcies (besides Party City) Yes BNPL Consolidation (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay. Sezzle) – at least one merges/exits US or BNPL. No Shopify launches an ad product such as a retail media network Yes Meta/Google/TikTok lose ad share to new social media platforms and retail media networks. No Live Streaming Commerce Still not meaningful in US in 2023 (less than 5% of social commerce in US) Yes Jason Total Score: 3 of 5 Scot: Amazon uses this 2022 setback/slowdown/reversion to the mean for a public resetting of expectations, but behind the scenes they take share and raise the bar on shipping. Yes Shopify is acquired No An innovation in e-commerce powered by ai (gpt4) surprises us by how fast it's adopted and how cool it is. Yes E-commerce accelerates back to the mean in 2H after a mean regression in 1H. E-com returns 10-15% growth rates. Yes Sephora and/or Ulta move to a subscription model for new product discovery. Yes Scot Total Score: 4 of 5 Trends revert to the mean, and Scot is back on Top! 2024 Predictions Jason: Retail Media Networks go In-store. At least 1 top 20 retailer launches a digital in-store ad network AI is even hotter at end of 2024 than now. Most text boxes in E-Com are GenAI powered. A least one retailer has an AI based auto-replenishment solution with significant adoption. Bifurcation drives at least two more retail bankruptcies, including 1 national specialty retailer, and one general merchandise/dept store. (two top 50 retailers) China companies focus more on West and get more traction. Shein successful IPO. Temu US gets to at least 75% of target US E-Com. Grocery E-Commerce goes from $95B to $125B in 2024 (after being down in 2023 per Bricks meets clicks). Bonus: Live-steaming, MetaVerse, Crypto still not a major thing in e-commerce; Management stops blaming performance on retail crime; and Smaller RMN's fail. Scot: Amazon relaunches Alexa on a native LLM Temu falters as people realize it's wish 2.0 RMN is currently $52b, growing 20% y/y, accelerates in 24 to 30% and $67b (coresight has the 52 datapoint) Instacart who's stock IPO'd at $33 and now is $23, solves ads and pops to 40 While everyone thinks Shein/Temu takes share from Amazon, they end up hurting Nordstrom, Macys and Target instead – materially (10%+) focus on apparel, maybe take target out? Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 316 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 11th, 2024. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show. This is episode 316 being recorded on Thursday, January 11th. I'm your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg. And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. go. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and Scott show listeners. Well, folks, this is one of our most popular shows of the year. This is our Jason and Scott annual prediction show. This is where being an audio podcast really works against us. You can't see us, but Jason, I normally wear leisure wear when we record the podcast, but tonight we're wearing tuxedos. Jason, I really like that cummerbund. It looks really good on you. Jason: [1:04] Thanks. Scot: [1:04] I feel like you've really elevated elevated your game this year the the suede tuxedo really suits you thanks thanks and the extra glitter on the bow tie was my daughter's influence smart the the 17 year old touch as you can never have enough glitter that is literally what she says half the time so yeah this is the show where we make we kind of self-score last year's predictions which would have been the predictions we made this time last year early January for 2023 and then we make new ones for this year the 2024 2024 predictions but before we jump into that Jason we're recording this on the Eve of nrf big show and I know that's a huge show for you it's now I think it's expanded it's always a fun weekend show which I've always appreciated that that was sarcasm and then I think they've extended it you know I think it was like what was it Saturday Sunday Monday and now there's like a Tuesday and then there's pre-days and post days so it's like a whole it's like a whole month of nrf big show are Are you teed up and energized and ready to go? Jason: [2:06] Yeah, and I feel like if all those things weren't exciting enough, you know, it's like 113 years old, and it's always over a holiday, Martin Luther King Day, and it always draws a blizzard, like either on the first day or the last day. And so this year, maybe we'll get both. Scot: [2:22] Yeah, yeah, and it's always fun. And it used to be there was nothing down in that part of New York, and now at least they have, what's that thing called? Hudson Yard or whatever. Jason: [2:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel like Manhattan has grown up around Javits a little bit. So you are definitely right. I have clients and partners with offices that are now walking distance from the show. And Hudson Yard is pretty cool. Scot: [2:42] Yeah, very cool. Now, are you speaking and also on behalf of the listeners, what are you going there to learn more about? Jason: [2:51] Yeah, so in the highly unlikely event, there's anyone that listens to this show that doesn't already know what the show is. National Retail Federation's big trade organization represents retail in the United States. It's their big event. 30,000-ish people come to New York City. Tons of exhibitors in a wide variety of fields. The area that's always fun for me is one area of the show is dedicated to innovation. So they give like inexpensive booths to small companies that, you know, aren't ready to invest in a big booth. And many of these are startups or startups from other countries. And, you know, so it's always, there's always a lot of wacky dubious stuff there. But in between that, there's usually some, you know, kind of cool ideas. And it's often the first place you'll see something that a few years down the road becomes, becomes one of the innovative new parts of retail. So I love walking the innovation center. Last year, retail media networks were the big thing at this show, and I'm sure they're going to be a big thing again this year. People were starting to talk about AI last year, but this year, I think it's just going to be off the hook. I think in order to get a booth, you had to say you were an AI company. I'm pretty sure the trash is getting emptied by AI sanitation engineers. [4:09] I feel like it's simultaneously going to be wildly overhyped and super important and transformative to the industry. So that'll be interesting to see how that all plays out. I like to talk about food and grocery a lot and InterF has done a lot to expand their coverage of the food industry. So there's a whole separate portion of the trade show dedicated to grocery retail vendors and a whole content track. So that stuff is all interesting. John Furner, the president of Walmart, will have a keynote. A bunch of other retailers will have keynotes. Magic Johnson is kind of the outside speaker that they're hyping this year, which is, I mean, fine, but I don't go for those paid, not retail speakers that much. And then I am speaking, I am doing a session on one of the featured stages that is entitled, Coming to America, which is all about what Western brands can and should be learning from the Chinese brands that are now successfully doing business in the US. And so most notably, Timu, Shein, and probably a little bit of TikTok. [5:26] Yeah very cool i also saw on linkedin that you had what i would call a close encounter with a. [5:32] Drone experience what tell us more about that i did so i mean scott i'm sure you remember this but it was like i looked it up it was like 2013 that jeff bezos was on 60 minutes and was like oh and we're going to deliver all the packages via drone wasn't it the eve before cyber monday was like that sunday night before yeah cyber money yeah and so he made that announcement and you know that sounded incredibly far-fetched and i don't know if you remember but i had a session that i was doing an internet big show that year and i dressed up a drone with the amazon air logo and landed it on stage at the javits center or i had someone that was better than me landed on stage at the javits center in the middle of my presentation as a joke and i got in huge trouble for that that's wildly illegal that's why they call you retail geek yeah sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness than permission is my philosophy on that one. But back then, it was like this kind of silly science fiction. And since then, we've on this show and in the press and media talked about various kind of edge use cases where drone delivery might actually make sense or be economical. And we've talked a lot about some of these pilots that both Amazon Amazon and Walmart are running. And so I know it's a real thing and you can really do it. And maybe in some use cases, it's even practical at this point. [6:57] This December, last December, so last month, I did my last trip of the year to Walmart, which is in Bentonville, Arkansas, which side note, downtown Bentonville is beautiful for Christmas. They have a super cool light show. So if you've never visited Walmart, that's the time to do it. But there is a small Walmart neighborhood market, which is their grocery store concept, which is in a small community of 5,000 people about about 30 miles away from Bentonville called Pea Ridge. And so I drove out to Pea Ridge to visit the Walmart neighborhood market. And behind the neighborhood market is a drone center. And they are actually delivering packages via drone on an ongoing basis for all the residents of this 5,000 person community. And so standing in a parking lot and having a bunch of these planes, and the Walmart ones are fixed wing aircraft, launch and like zoom over your head and all the signs in the parking lot, you know, say low flying aircraft beware. [8:00] And like seeing all these planes like launch, it was more fun and cool than I expected it to be. And what's particularly cool is this particular model, the way they recover the planes is the planes all have a hook on the tail and they literally have a a retractable zip line that like two robot arms raise up and it puts the zip line across the drone center, which is elevated. And the plane flies into the zip line and gets hung up and it just swings like a swing until it loses momentum. And so, you know, I just sat there for like probably 45 minutes and watched like 10 planes launch and get caught by the zip lines. And I I made a video and put it on LinkedIn. So I edited it down to like a minute, but I know this is not new news to most people on this show that there's drone deliveries, but I'm telling you like when you actually see one in person, it's still kind of cool. Scot: [8:58] Neat. Are they, obviously they're not going to carry like a gallon of milk or something super heavy like that. What's their payload max on this? Jason: [9:06] Yeah, so I am not super well-versed on exactly what, like the one part of the experience I couldn't see, unfortunately, Unfortunately, you'd have to be pretty lucky to be out of residence when a delivery was happening. I think it's like a four-pound payload, and it's dropped via parachute. And I know the way it works is you register in advance to be a drone delivery site, and then you're given a little foldable circle target that you put in your backyard, and the drone drops the packages right on this target. And so, you know, Walmart neighborhood market is… Scot: [9:42] It's a grocery store with like you know dry goods and pharmacy and stuff like that so i i think it's a lot of like bottles of advil and things like that that are likely getting delivered there, very cool so head over to linkedin and look up jason and it's it's the post that starts you know x years ago on 60 minutes and it's in there yeah i'll put a link in the show notes if you if you want to find it quick cool one last topic we wanted to cover before we get into the meat of of the prediction show, Jason and I have been getting a lot of questions from listeners and it concerns a slowdown in our frequency. Well, no one can pull the wool over our listeners' eyes. You guys caught us. We have slowed down our frequency. And that's because starting with the next episode, 317, we're going to rebrand and it's going to be the Jason Bott and Scott Bott show. And nothing's going to really change. We are going to increase the frequency. It's going going to be daily. You guys wanted more shows. So next year, we're not going to do 365. That would be too much, but like 355, something like that. And you probably guessed by the rebranding that it's going to be Jason and I writing the outline of the show. But Jason, being the geek he is, has created a Gen AI version of himself that's been trained on 800 hours of Jason content. and he produces a lot more content than I do. So about 300 hours a month. So congrats, Jason, on this technological breakthrough. Jason: [11:09] Yeah. I'm super excited about that. You've disclosed one of the secrets to our success is that every episode is about a three to one ratio of Jason and Scott. Scot: [11:22] Since you do the audio editing, I try to go easy on you and you're self-inflicting your own pain. Yeah. Jason: [11:27] The truth, and that may be the norm, but the truth is we have two kinds of shows. There are shows where you are much more dominant than I am. And then there's shows where I I contribute more than you. It's kind of funny to see the flip-flop. If you get an interesting entrepreneur or you get a deep dive in a really arcane portion of Amazon's business, you get a lot of Scott. Scot: [11:48] Yeah. Yeah, that's where I thrive in the darkest corners of the interwebs. Yeah. Seriously, though. Jason: [11:55] I was just going to say one side note on that. That LLM we trained, you can now buy on the OpenAI GPT store that went live tonight. Scot: [12:03] Yeah, and you can have your own personalized. We get a lot of requests for personalized shows, so you can just write your own. Jason: [12:09] There you go. Scot: [12:09] Yeah. We'll talk to you in a three-to-one ratio of Jason to Scott. But seriously, though, we do not have an LLM. We wouldn't do that to you, but our frequency has decreased. We looked this up, and our first show was on November 14, 2015, if you believe it or not. So that's over eight years ago we started. This will be our ninth year. And yeah, so that's a lot of content. And when we started, I had just, I was one year into my current company Spiffy, and now we'll be celebrating our 10 years this year at Spiffy. And we had five employees and now we have about 500. Jason worked for Razorfish and he only had two words in his title. And now he works for the biggest or one of the biggest ad agencies with a fancy French name called Publicis. [12:59] And he has 16 words in his title. So there in his world, you measure your success by the size of your title. And he has done awesome. So both of those endeavors have kept us a little bit busier than we were nine to 10 years ago. So that is the root cause of our slowdown. We did the math and we actually did 15 shows last year. So it was like monthly plus a couple extras, plus three, if you will. We used to do around 50 a year. So you're all right. We have reduced the frequency. Apologies for that. this is a passion project for us so our revenue good news our revenue has not gone down which is which is good because we don't make any revenue we just love talking about this stuff and hanging out together and that was the whole genesis of this show and still is true even though we have less time to do it anything you want to add there jason yeah no i i think i mean obviously i feel like we've both gone a tremendous amount out of the show and we we love it and want to want to keep it going we want to make sure when we do shows that that they're interesting and valuable for folks. Jason: [13:57] And so one of the things that I've gotten a lot of feedback on is we, you know, every year we've always done a handful of these deep dives on particular topics. And I feel like the shows we get the most compliments on are when we do these deep dives or when we do really detailed breakdowns on the Amazon earning shows. And so, you know, certainly we'll still keep the Amazon earning shows on the schedule, but like, I'd like to lean into if, you know, if we are going to, you know do sort of one to two shows a month uh lean into some of those like more prep higher production deep dives as well so that is one of my new year's resolutions is to drink a lot more ice coffee and the other one is going to be to make sure we get get some relevant deep dives into the show schedule every year yeah there's got to be on the topic of ice coffee there has to be some limit to what the human body can endure there so it's going to be interesting too you're kind of a tim Tim Ferriss body experiment mode with the level of coffee you're reaching. Scot: [14:58] So I look forward to seeing how this goes. Jason: [15:00] Hack myself. Scot: [15:03] Okay. With that housekeeping out of the way, let's jump into the meat and potatoes of the show. As mentioned, this is our annual prediction show. Way back in episode 301, recorded on January 20th, 2023, we made five predictions each about what would happen in the upcoming year, which was 2023. 23. Let's go through and review our performance because jason is first in our title he always gets to go first decision i greatly regret from eight years ago just kidding my memory from eight years ago is you did name the show yeah scott and jason just doesn't it doesn't sound right obviously so here we are so jason go ahead i'll read your prediction and then you self-score All right, Jason, prediction number one, insert drum roll sound effect. You predicted, prediction number one, at least two retail bankruptcies besides Party City would occur. How'd you do on that one, Jason? Jason: [16:03] Yeah, well, Mr. Debbie Downer was right. The Party City reference was because Party City had already declared bankruptcy by mid-January of that year. But unfortunately, there were a number of other bankruptcies last year. So the marquee one was probably Bed Bath & Beyond, although they have a new life as the brand for Overstock. Talk david's bridal right aid but the one that i'm personally maybe the most sad about and i know you were a customer if not a fan was boxy yeah yeah very sad yeah so i'm giving myself credit for that that first one although i feel like a bad person for making negative predictions, it's kind of part of your personality i used to be the malageddon guy and now you flipped lived through the bankruptcy guy. Scot: [16:49] So I appreciate you carrying the banner on that one. Jason: [16:52] I'm here for you, man. Scot: [16:53] Okay. So that's so far one out of five is what we're scoring you. So one right, zero wrong. And number two, buy now, pay later consolidation. Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, excuse me, Afterbuy is another one, et cetera. At least one of these will emerge or exit the US or BNPL altogether. Jason: [17:15] Yeah, and I failed. Those companies, for the most part, continued to gain traction. I want to say Sezzle had some valuation problems, although it started to recover in Q4 this year, but they're all viable, independent entities still going. So that is a miss. Scot: [17:34] Okay, cool. So we're now tied one and one, one right, one wrong out of the first two. So batting 50, which is pretty good for a batting average. Above my my career average i'm pretty sure yeah yeah we we i have i will self-admit we've done a terrible job of track tracking this over the years because you know it's really fun and it's just trying to it's good exercise and i recommend you do it too listeners because it makes you think, in a little bit longer term way and when you make a prediction and you don't have to put yours out there but when you put it out there it makes you think a little bit a little bit deeper about it Your third prediction, prediction number three, was in 2023, Shopify will launch an ad product such as a retail media network. You were banging the RMN drum back then. Jason: [18:22] Oh, for sure. So this is a complicated one. I feel like I kind of got it right, but full disclosure, not in the way I expected. So when I wrote that, I really thought, gosh, Shopify's got, you know, all these independent stores that are probably too small to have retail media networks. That, you know, one of the interesting products Shopify could launch is a sort of a confederate network where, you know, all these individual sellers opt into a shared advertising product that Shopify could administer and help all these sites to monetize their traffic. And that did not happen. But what I wrote was launch an ad product such as a retail media network. And last year, Shopify did launch, they already had a product called Shopify Audiences, which is buy data on anonymous data on people that use ShopPay to help target ads. And last year, they added automated integrations with Snap, Criteo, which Criteo is a multi-platform advertising platform, and TikTok. So as a Shopify seller, you could now say, hey, I want to go buy an ad using Shopify customer data to define your market it and have it automatically placed on all these different digital media platforms. So I don't know. I feel like I kind of lucked into it because it didn't happen the way I thought, but it kind of did happen. Yeah. Scot: [19:49] Okay. We will give you, so at this point we're on number three and you've got two right, one wrong. Heading into the fourth prediction. And this one was in 2023, Meta, Google, TikTok are going to lose ad share to new social media platforms and retail media networks. How did you do on that one? Jason: [20:10] The real answer is I don't know. So I expected it to be much more prominent. And the tail of the tape is kind of mixed. Using eMarketer data, Google lost share across all their properties. So they went from 28% to 26%. Meta was kind of flat at 20%. They They lost share in Facebook but gained a little share in Instagram. And then TikTok actually grew a little share, so from 2% to 2.4%. And then the retail media networks obviously did gain share, but they're smaller. So Amazon went from like 11% to 13%. Walmart went from like less than 1% to 1.2%. So it kind of happened, but it happened. Scot: [20:56] To a tenth of a percent instead of what i i sort of felt would happen which was multiple percentages so i'm gonna not give myself credit for that one okay that's very generous of you, we uh this is the trick of writing these in hindsight you're always you wish you'd put like a clear number there so you'd be easier to score 100 100 they're kind of being squishy all right so here on number four you're at you're back to 50 50 so two right and two wrong and then one One quick clarification was this share of digital ads, like not all ads, right? Like not TV and stuff in the DOM denominator. All right. Number five prediction for Jason Retail Geek. For 2023, live streaming commerce, still not meaningful in the US. It will be less than 5% of social commerce in the United States of America. How'd you do on that one? Jason: [21:50] Also, the real answer is don't know because it turns out there's no good data source for truly measuring live streaming commerce. The estimates, which are based on these kind of thousand person surveys, are that all video commerce in the US is like 32 billion to 50 billion. And so how much of that like really happened live? Even if all of that was live, it's still not 5% of total e-commerce, but like what what percentage of e-commerce is social commerce. I just, I ended up feeling like I wrote a bad, squishy forecast, but there is part of me that wants to say, hey, the spirit of this was people aren't gonna be shopping for products live on video and it's not gonna be very meaningful. And I think that that is absolutely the case, that it's not meaningful. Scot: [22:39] Yeah, one thing that's interesting about, kind of like thinking back on 2023 with streaming, There's a couple of things I'm kind of just pontificating here. I don't I don't have an I'm not scoring you. Yeah, I kind of want to use this opportunity to pick your brain. So, you know, we have TikTok shops. I'm going to guess you don't think that's live streaming, right? Because it's like a recorded video and you're selling an ad next to it. Is that exactly? Jason: [23:04] And when you say I don't think it's live streaming, it's because it's it's not. Scot: [23:07] It's not. You're not putting it in your definition of live streaming. Yeah. Jason: [23:11] And that's something different to you. Scot: [23:13] But it's like a static streaming revenue or something. I don't know. Jason: [23:17] Yeah, I think there is video commerce, right? And even video commerce is not a very big thing. But most of TikTok shops and YouTube native checkout and these other experiences are what we would call video commerce. And there are now a couple vendors that have decent size revenue helping enable video commerce. So I think of someone like a fireworks, for example, that, that adds, adds video commerce to a lot of e-commerce sites and ad platforms. Scot: [23:45] And then how about, so there was a really interesting experiment and I don't think we talked about it because we were deep into the holiday data stream, but you know, Amazon had Thursday night prime video football. And then on Thanksgiving, the Friday after Thanksgiving, they bumped the game and did it on Friday. And part of that was if you watched the thing that's fascinating about the Amazon live stream is there's like three or four sub streams in there. And one of them had basically QR codes and you could buy right from the ad. Yeah. Is that live streaming or it was like an ad next to a football live stream in your view? Yeah. Jason: [24:23] So I do think that would meet the definition of live streaming because most people watch that game live. live, and they didn't disclose any data on how those were done. I could tell you in talking to several people that bought those ads, there was not meaningful engagement with the QR codes. [24:43] And so, yeah, you know, I think there's still lots of experiments. I think there's use cases where native checkout in video makes a lot of sense. There's even a few use cases where live video make sense, but they're edge cases. They're not, it's not the main thing. And again, there's a big difference between China and the US. There is a ton of content that is streamed only live and allows you to buy stuff in China, but it's mostly deals stuff. It's kind of like the next generation of guilt.com, if you will. And it's mostly like very scarce items. So it's farmers in tier three cities in China selling their produce for the week. And when they're out, they're out. And so they don't store the video and have people watch it later in order because they sell all their apples during the live stream. And that's a meaningful way people sell stuff in China. It's just it's just not I mean like the vast majority of video can be time shifted in the US and then it's not live streaming and you know we still for the most part don't have people buying a lot of stuff even you know through through video that's not live so I feel like because of the success in China it gets a little overhyped in the US and I feel like it hasn't lived up to the hype a. [26:02] Year ago though I would argue there are a bunch of vendors telling us that this is the next thing and we're all going to be out of business if we don't jump on the bandwagon and i can assure you if you did not jump on that bandwagon you you potentially are still in business. [26:14] Got it i know how amazon's going to solve this so hear me out this is this is an unofficial prediction and i know andy jassy listens to this show so andy here's how to solve this i'm going to share my entrepreneurial insights number one you have to keep travis and taylor together number Number two, you've got to get the Kansas City game next Friday after 2024 is Thanksgiving. Scot: [26:36] And then you have to sell exclusive Taylor merchandise on that game. So that's how you're going to get the engagement you want. You got to tap into the Swifties. Jason: [26:45] Yeah, I feel like the Swifty economy is a way to solve any business problem. I'll totally agree with that. I will throw out Amazon, you know, did lean into live streaming and they had a product called Talk Shop Live. And you know by all accounts it wasn't very successful the people they they bribed influencers with extra bonuses to produce content and as soon as they stopped offering those bonuses all those influencers moved off the platform and now it there's a a version of it that still exists but once again it's not live yeah yeah uh okay so what does that give me three out of three uh Uh, three out of five. Scot: [27:25] Yeah. So you, so three, correct. Two wrong. So that's good. You have a winning average. That's very similar to my college career. Jason: [27:32] Yeah. Scot: [27:32] There you go. Yeah. Gentleman's a D minus. Yeah. Jason: [27:40] So now let's get to Mr. Sparty Pants, who I suspect and fear did much better than me. So Scott, you'll remember your first prediction. It'll come as a shock to no one involves Amazon, right? Amazon uses this 2022 setback slash slowdown slash reversion to the mean for a public resetting of expectations. But behind the scenes, they take share and raise the bar on shipping. Scot: [28:09] Yeah. I, um, the shipping part was surprisingly clairvoyant there because, you know, what they did in 2023 is one of the things Jassy dug into this and they did these, what do they call it? Nodes regional. Yeah. These regional nodes. And they, they started zoning out at a tight level. They were moving too much product too far unnecessarily. And they, they really tightened that up and it allowed them to cut costs pretty dramatically on shipping and get a lot of leverage that that everyone was surprised about but also and this is nice they similarly you know have really cranked up to delivery speed and delighted customers so so you know very rarely in a business do you find something that that both saves money and delight usually you're having to make a choice you're like well i could save money but customers are going to hate this this was what very aligned with their, you know, their corporate goals of being like wildly efficient and automated, but at the same time, getting products to customers faster. So I think they had a pretty good year. So they've, you know, everyone was in the doldrums about Amazon. Everyone was like, oh, this Jassy guy is really messing things up. And I think he went kind of back to basics and said, let's squeeze some nickels and dimes out of this shipping thing and get it a little faster. And the customers have reacted to it. So I would score that one correct. Jason: [29:32] Yeah, 100%. I feel like Tim cooked it, and it was a good call on your part. Scot: [29:36] Yeah, absolutely. Jason: [29:38] So your second prediction, and I'd like to harp on this one a while if possible, is that Shopify would get acquired. Remind me, did that happen? Scot: [29:49] It did not, but you have to put this in context. Shopify dropped, what was it, like from $60 billion to $10 billion? They had a precipitous fall, and they had a lot of missteps. So they, you know, when this happened, you and I, I think jointly predicted that them getting into fulfillment was not only a bad idea, but a terrible idea. So this is the year they had to unwind all that, which I thought it would be. [30:18] I didn't think they would do that, but kudos to them. You know, so I 100% give them this is very hard to make a mistake and fix it out in the public world. It is a very humbling thing, but they sure did. So they got rid of the shipping part. They turned that into a little bit of lemonade where they ended up having a good partnership with a company that acquired Flexport, I believe it is. And then they have made a series of moves that have rebounded not all the way back to where they were, but they have done very well and they are not going to be acquired or they're not in any kind of existential problems. I do still think there's a world where meta, I think the natural require for them is meta. And at some point, those companies kind of have to go together. I also, if I recall my thesis on this, it was around the first party, the third party data going away. And I felt like they'd have to go on to a first party network. I still think that's true. I think they can survive independently. independently but i think to unlock a lot of value they need to be married into a first party entity more tightly so yeah yeah and of course the stock has rebounded a bit so it's it's it's a bigger swing now yeah i don't you know i you will spoil alert i did not repeat this. [31:42] This prediction i was gonna say you technically only missed that prediction by one word had you had you written shopify with fulfillment is acquired you you kind of would have been right, yeah long time listeners will know i have a long history of repeating predictions and then it never works out for me so i've learned my lesson the hard way my my big one was like for what have we we've been doing this for like eight times i guess or maybe this is the ninth and you know literally for like five years i predicted amazon would compete with them with fedex and i gave up and then like two years later they announced they're gonna compete as soon as you stop repeating it that's when you know it's gonna happen yeah so maybe i am predicting shopping there you go Oh, head explode emoji. Jason: [32:21] Yeah. So one out of two. So then let's move on to number three. And innovation in e-commerce powered by AI, such as GPT-4, surprises us by how fast it's adopted and how cool it is. Scot: [32:36] Yeah, I would say there's no one innovation that you can kind of say, wow, everyone added X to their site and it was amazing. But I would say it's pretty amazing how many retailers are using and getting a lot of value out of AGI. So, you know, the one you read a lot about is the helping of writing product description pages and tightening those up. A lot of people are using it for customer service and really improving that. A lot of people are using it for, you know, one of the things that's a total pain in the e-commerce world is many times you want to take a product image and it's, you know, it's in a scene and you want to isolate it. And then you want to spin it around and do a video and inject that thing in another templated video. you know, that was always very hard. And you would send these images to, you know, a, you know, another country where someone would, you know, for $5 an hour, sit there and meticulously isolate the item out of the background and pixel by pixel do that. Now they have, you know, pretty awesome AI systems for doing all those things. And, you know, retailers are using those pretty heavily. So I would say. [33:48] It's a little hard to score this one. I'll defer to you. I feel like I've been surprised by how much of it was useful. I think a lot of people were kind of saying this is going to be another blockchain, another live stream, another social chat commerce kind of a thing. AI is going to be a flash in the pan. And I would say, you know, companies are really using this. It's real. It's impacting the customer experience and improving retailers margins because they can be wildly more efficient. Jason: [34:15] Yeah, no. So I'm for sure giving it to you. I feel like part of the art here is you have to go back in time to last January and put yourself in the context that this was made. And I think there's a lot of things that are being routinely done today and are pretty darn cool that we would not have believed happened last January. And I think all that text on product detail page is one. The images is for sure one. there used to be whole sections of these trade shows dedicated to companies that were doing image manipulation and image masking and all that stuff. And they're all gone because the AI is so good. And I would also say they're now like it's starting to be pretty meaningful in search. Like Instacart has had generative AI search engine for a while. Walmart just launched generative AI in their search engine. So, you know, there is a lot of flavors of AI that are overhyped and it, But, you know, it is like, I mean, there are a lot of AI snow jobs out there, but also there's a lot of legitimate stuff. And so I think I definitely have to give you that one. So I think you're two out of three at the moment. Scot: [35:22] Awesome. Jason: [35:23] And so then we move on to number four. E-commerce accelerates back to the mean in the second half after a mean regression in the first half. E-commerce returns to 10 to 15 percent growth rate. Scot: [35:36] Yeah, I will. The bulk of my e-commerce data comes from Amazon. And I would say Amazon kind of checked this box. But you, the ultimate consumer and gesture and recool charter of all the data, do you agree that I got this one? Jason: [35:53] I do, especially because you were prescient enough to list the growth rate as a range from 10 to 15. So I'd say there was this weird regression where there was even a stage where retail was growing faster than e-commerce. And for sure, by the second half of last year, we were back to sort of normal trends with retail growing at 3% to 4%. And kind of pre-pandemic, e-commerce might have been growing at like 14% or 15%. And it returned to sort of 10% growth. So I think you definitely hit the spirit of this that we're kind of back to normal. And I think you also hit the technical letter of your prediction because I think we surpassed 10% growth for e-commerce. Scot: [36:40] Cool. So that puts us at three right now. Jason: [36:44] Three for four, which basically means you have to miss this last one for us to tie. Um, and I, I think I'm in trouble because your last one was Sephora and or Ulta moved to a subscription model for new product discovery. Scot: [37:02] Yeah, I, you know, I have to tip my hat to my daughter who previously mentioned is now 17 and was 16. Thanks to her. I spend an inordinate amount of time and money in both Sephora and Ulta. So this one was inspired by her. And yeah, I do have to admit before the show, I didn't know how I did on this one, but I was looking and I see Sephora has this thing called play exclamation mark. And it's the beauty inside community community announcing our new monthly beauty subscription box. Play on players. I don't know if you subscribe to that, Jason, but it sounds like your kind of thing. Jason: [37:39] You said oh yeah i was i was a pilot user you can't get this kind of camera ready look for the podcast without being totally totally plugged into all those products yeah no i think i think you definitely get this one if i was smarter i should have objected at the time because there's a debatable way in which this was already happening back then but they had subscribe and save but that doesn't count that's like auto that's like yeah with some sampling and stuff So, but I think it's much more customer facing and prominent now. So I, I'm giving it to you. So I'm giving you four out of five, which any year would be good performance. And in this particular year, it's both good performance and enough to declare you the winner. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. And I will be sending the Claret Jug to your home to live for the next year. Scot: [38:30] Awesome. Thanks. Thanks everybody. Jason: [38:31] Everybody I would like to I am a little salty to the folks at Shopify Toby if you're listening if you had only said yes to whatever acquisition came your way I would have been 100 so thanks dude thanks for everything so now for the three listeners that have hung out for our 15 minute of pre-ramble and our and our 20 minutes of scoring you finally get to the meat what the heck is going to happen in the world of e-commerce in the next year Nostradamus Thomas? Scot: [39:00] Yeah, let's continue. I just went, so why don't you give us the Jason Retail Geek Goldberg 2024 predictions for retail. Go. Jason: [39:12] Yeah. So last year, retail media networks were super hot. I think this year is going to be the year that the big retail media networks really start focusing on their in-store audiences. So I'm calling it Retail Media Networks Go In-Store, and I'm predicting that at least one top 20 retailer will launch a digital in-store ad network. So some kind of screens or interactive displays in a store that you can buy ads on through the retail media network. Scot: [39:41] So I'm in Sephora or whatever retailer. There's a cool screen telling me about this exciting new Kardashian lip color. And I go and interact with it and suddenly an ad comes up for something else. Jason: [39:53] Exactly. Scot: [39:55] Okay. Jason: [39:56] Switching you to the Taylor Swift cosmetics from the Kim Kardashian ones. Scot: [39:59] Whoa. Swifties make another appearance in the predictions. All right. Jason: [40:03] Exactly. My second one, I know what the spirit is. I struggled to make it specific enough that we can measure it, but I tried. So we've been talking a lot about AI. You had an AI prediction last year. [40:16] I think while a lot of these trends kind of get really buzzy and then die down, I think AI is the real deal. I think despite all the hype, AI is going to be even hotter in in December of 2024 than it is right now. And so the way I'm gonna try to quantify that is, I think by December of 2024, it will be more common than not that if there's a text box in an e-commerce experience, it's gonna be powered by generative AI. So we're gonna start typing sentences into all of these search engines instead of keywords. I think it is gonna take consumers a little while to learn to do that after it's possible, but I think that'll be really common. And then I think at least one retailer is going to have an AI-based auto replenishment solution that has significant adoption. And I need to clarify that because one retailer, Walmart, announced it at CES yesterday. So I don't think it exists yet, but they've announced that they're going to do it. And my prediction is not that they're going to try it. My prediction is that it will work or someone else will do one that works. and it's very different than like a subscription-based thing where you automatically get a fixed amount of something. This is going to be, you know, handing the keys to the computer and letting the computer decide how much peanut butter you're going through and making sure that I send you new peanut butter whenever you need it. Scot: [41:38] Hmm. Cool. Jason: [41:40] So that's number two. Number three, I really think this is going to be a bifurcated year in terms of retail prospects. I think we're going to have a handful of retailers that are really going to do well, that are poised for some growth rebounds from the last couple of years. Yeah, I kind of think Amazon and Walmart are both going to be in that bucket. I think we're going to disagree about this, but I think some of the Chinese companies like Timu and Shein might might be in that bucket. And I think there's going to be some other traditional retailers that really struggle. And so you're either going to do well or do poorly. I don't think there's going to be very many retailers kind of treading water in the middle of the road. And as a result, I think we're going to have a couple more significant bankruptcies in 2024. So the Grim Reaper is at it again. I'm once again predicting that at least two well-known retailers will close their doors and this year i'll be slightly more specific at least one of them is going to be a specialty retailer so in a category and another is going to be a general merchant or department store so i hope to be wrong on that one but it is what it is that's prediction number three how about a little size this can be like a two unit kind of a thing or no no no these uh yeah like these have to be a little more two two top 50 retailers like oh okay oh let's write Write that in because I won't remember that next time. Okay. [43:02] I will add it and then delete it in about six months when you've forgotten. No, I'll remember. Yeah. So number four, and this is where I think it's going to start getting fun. [43:12] I actually think that we're going to see more Chinese companies focusing on Western consumers. So I actually think that for a variety of reasons, the Chinese economy is not as hot as it once was. And I think it's going to take a little while to recover. So I think there's going to be more entrepreneurs in China trying to export their solutions to other parts of the world. And, you know, Timu and Xi'an are certainly the two most noted examples of companies that don't sell in China, but do sell in the U.S. I think Xi'an is going to successfully execute a Western IPO next year. And I think Timu is going to continue to grow. And very specifically, I think by 20, by the end of 2024, Timu is going to have at least 75% of the e-commerce revenue that we see from a very well-established U S retailer like target for e-commerce. Scot: [44:06] Okay. Now, are you implying it comes out of targets hide or that just like that? Jason: [44:10] I do think it's partially is going to come out of targets hide, but I'm not specifically saying that I feel like target could come down a little bit and that would help me make this. but I actually think e-commerce will not be the sore spot at Target next year. Scot: [44:25] Got it. Jason: [44:27] So that's number four. I'm bullish on the Chinese companies coming to America. And my fifth one is going to go to grocery e-commerce. So, you know, grocery e-commerce grew a lot during the pandemic, but fun fact, grocery e-commerce actually shrunk a little bit in 2023 relative to the big growth they had in 2022, like partly because groceries got more expensive, people, it was safer to go back to grocery stores. And so people kind of regressed a little bit in their e-commerce shopping. So the best source we have for e-commerce data for grocery is BricksMeetClicks, which is a big, it's a survey, but it's a big survey. So the BricksMeetClicks folks said that grocery e-commerce shrunk by about 2%. And I'm saying they're going to grow by like 25% in 2024. So very meaningful acceleration and growth. Scot: [45:18] Cool. Jason: [45:20] So those are my five. Some years we did bonuses. is. I'm just going to throw out some other things that I guarantee are going to happen, but I don't want to bother making them predictions because they're too hard to measure. But as I did this year, again, I'm going to say live streaming is not a major thing next year either. And I'll throw the metaverse and crypto in there as well. If you're an innovative startup that's going to solve retail with live streaming the metaverse and crypto, please don't send me an email. Scot: [45:46] But it's on blockchain. Jason: [45:48] Yeah, exactly. If you're doing anything on blockchain, the first thing i need to know is why i can't just do it with a database and why i need a distributed ledger so if you can't answer that question don't call me um because blockchain yeah, i i think another one that really annoys me i couldn't figure out how to measure this so i didn't make it a forecast but i think you're going to hear a lot less retail ceos blaming their poor performance on retail crime next year if you don't know or haven't been following it That's mostly a scam. Shrink in retail is down. There is this new kind of crime called organized retail crime, which is awful, and people get hurt, and people should stop doing it. But it's not economically meaningful, and it's not the reason that any of these retailers miss their guidance. And I think we're going to see. [46:34] And CEOs stop leaning on it as much because it's becoming obvious that it's a false excuse. And lastly, I was bullish on some of the big retail media networks in my predictions. I said one would go in-store. But a corollary to that, there's a lot of really small retailers that are seeing the success of the big retailers and trying to launch retail media networks. And yeah, that's not going to work. So if you're, you know, a relatively unsuccessful e-commerce, a specialty retailer with small e-commerce or you're a regional retailer, you're just not going to have enough traffic and a big enough audience to make it work. So I think, you know, I'm starting to see some retailers that are probably on the wrong side of the scale equation, trying retail media networks and I'm mostly not optimistic for them. So, so you heard it here first. Scot: [47:24] So the world where they patch together in like a little alliance and like a a Battlestar Galactica kind of thing and get some heft. Jason: [47:32] There is. There absolutely is. And the most notable place that's happening is in Europe. And kind of interestingly, the biggest retailer in Europe, Carrefour, like sort of embrace that. Like Carrefour is the Battlestar Galactica in this, this like, you know, convoy of ragtag, this fleet of ragtag ships. And so, so you're exactly right. And I heard the giant French advertising company that is helping them do it is decent too. Scot: [47:59] Yeah. Soccer blue. One clarification on your grocery e-commerce thing. You know, that's a big number, right? That's like 30% off a big base, 25%. Are you counting like curb pickup on that? Jason: [48:15] Yeah. So I'm specifically using the Bricksmeet Clicks metric, which does include three categories of grocery. It's curbside pickup, which is over 50% of grocery in most U.S. cities. It's home delivery of groceries. And it is actually shipping of some grocery items, but that's a relatively small one. Yeah. Scot: [48:37] So Instacart would be kind of captured in there as well. Jason: [48:39] They would. Yeah. Yeah. Side note, I actually, I think I'm not as bullish on Instacart as I think you're going to be, but they will certainly be part of it that helps me make this prediction. Scot: [48:51] Cool. And we should have said this before we got into the predictions, but what we do is we do these independently and then we splat them into our shared show notes that we have here that Jason and I use. Jason: [48:59] Yeah. So it would have been possible for us to have the same predictions, but we did not. Scot: [49:03] We never see each other's beforehand. So that's a part of the fun. So there's no, no, no planning or, or, you know, kind of swapping and prediction. Jason: [49:12] No cross-contamination. Scot: [49:14] But because we're, we don't have any revenue, we don't have Pricewaterhouse verifying that. You're just going to have to trust us. Okay. Jason: [49:23] What do you have, Scott? Scot: [49:24] Well, I want to point out that I see you snuck in three bonuses. So you took, so yet again, you're hogging the stage, but that's okay. You're first in the, in the title there. Jason: [49:34] And I have many more words in my title in case you didn't notice. Scot: [49:38] Being a rule follower, I have five predictions, not eight. And my first one is Amazon's going to relaunch Alexa on a native LLM. So, yeah, Alexa and the whole Siri and what's the Xbox one, Katana, you know, Cortana, they they once you interact with the chat GPT voice, which is a little slow, but it's a little slower than those. But the responses are so much better. You really want to just throw your Alexa in the garbage can. So, you know, this is tricky because Amazon doesn't have an LLM. The things they've done on AWS are kind of like geared towards being neutral, and I think they're not going to stay neutral. So they have to be neutral, and then they have to rewrite Alexa on that. Maybe it's tricky because what do you do? Do you call it like new Alexa, or do you change their name, or you've got some brand equity built there? So it's going to be interesting to see how they navigate that. that. [50:40] And then number two is I don't understand how Timu isn't just wish dot 2.0. So in the early days of wish, everyone got all excited and they're like, oh my God, this is amazing. I can buy all this cheap stuff and it comes and it's amazing. And it's like a dollar drone and it's awesome. And then it showed up six months later and then it broke in five minutes. So I think there's a lot of buzz around these things. I think a lot of this stuff gets supported by China and free shipping and these kinds of things that the Chinese government does to help give their Chinese-born companies an edge. And none of that is infinite, right? So we saw that with Alibaba and Alipay. That whole thing kind of has had a whole situation in China where it got too big and they didn't like the success there. And Jack Ma, and Lord knows what's happened to him. I think these, I think Timu is kind of, there's gonna be some kind of an episode like that. And this was my, I kind of use the word falters. So that kind of thing. I don't think they're gonna do an IPO. That would really shock me. Jason: [51:48] Yeah, I think we're going to, I mean. Scot: [51:50] Yeah. So we're misaligned on that one, which makes it fun. Yeah, either could happen. Jason: [51:53] There are smart people that think on both sides of that one, but that's a fun one. We'll agree to disagree. Scot: [51:58] But both can't happen. So this is a zero-sum game one for sure. Jason: [52:01] Exactly. Scot: [52:02] And then, you know, this one I guess we're aligned on, but I kind of got more specific because you always do super generic ones that make it easier to get them. [52:13] Retail media networks are currently and i found a there's a research firm called core site so like you i wanted to kind of pick a measurement stick here and they say the whole world that that whole thing in 2023 did 52 billion and it's growing 20 so that's their data and i said my prediction thus is it's going to accelerate this year to 30 growth and that brings it to to about 67 billion. So, you know, clever listeners that listen to our Amazon recaps, you'll know, you'll notice that, well, okay, if that's at 52 billion, Amazon ads are at like, what are they? Like 49, 45 billion? So, but that's a run rate. So for that Amazon number, you take the quarter, and the last one we talked about was Q3, Q4 will be coming out soon. So we took the Q3 number, multiply it by four, and that's how you get the 45-ish. So, so really doing 15 a quarter, but the prior quarter was like, like 10 ish. And the prior quarter that was like eight ish. So, so Amazon didn't do 45 in a year. They probably did more like 35 to 30 in the year. But the trajectory is such that when you do the run rate, it comes out to be a big number. So, so they are a large part of that 52 billion, but they're not like 90% of it. They're, you know, 65% of it or so. So there's that one. Jason: [53:34] Okay. Scot: [53:35] Number four, and this one we're kind of aligned on, surprisingly, even though the specifics you disagree with. Here, I've been
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