Podcasts about wholesale club

As retail continues to evolve at the intersection of technology and human connection, Jason Johnson, CIO of Sweetwater Sound, offers a compelling perspective on what it means to lead with both innovation and heart. On this episode of “Retail Gets Real,” Johnson discusses how Sweetwater has grown into one of the most distinctive retailers in the industry by treating technology not as a back-office function, but as a core driver of growth — especially with its team of more than 700 commissioned sales engineers building off the founder's core mission of deeply personal service(00:00:00) Inside Sweetwater's rock ‘n' roll retail model(00:04:46) From Navy service to CIO leadership(00:11:10) Innovating at scale with AI and education(00:16:30) Bringing the in-store experience online(00:19:40) Leading with radical transparency and trust(00:23:12) Building a culture where people truly thrive(00:26:34) The future of retail in an AI-powered worldThe National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association.Every day, we passionately stand up for the people, policies and ideas that help retail succeed.Resources:• Visit sweetwater.com • Become an NRF member and join the world's largest retail trade association• Learn about our retail education platform, NRF Foundation, at nrffoundation.org• Learn about retail advocacy at nrf.com/advocacy• Find more episodes at retailgetsreal.comRelated:• 392: How Warby Parker is redefining retail and customer experience• 364: How BJ's Wholesale Club leverages AI to serve its customers

(2.6.2026-2 .13.2026) Bad fish & chips, mate. Tune in.#applepodcasts⁠⁠ ⁠⁠#spotifypodcasts⁠⁠ ⁠⁠#youtube #amazon⁠⁠ ⁠⁠#patreon⁠⁠patreon.com/isaiahnews

Two taps. That's all it took to reorder your regular Dunkin order through CarPlay while driving. Sounds like the perfect frictionless feature, right? Except it was quietly training customers to spend less on every visit because they never discovered loaded hash browns existed. Sometimes making things too easy becomes the problem.This encore episode brings back one of our most quoted conversations with Adam Candela, who spent five years leading digital at Dunkin and fundamentally changed how we think about balancing frictionless with profitability.  Join hosts Chuck Moxley and Nick Paladino as they revisit why this episode matters.Nick literally quotes it in meetings once a week, particularly the CarPlay example that shows how extreme optimization in one direction can backfire. Adam breaks down why frictionless isn't just about speed and simplicity, but about creating experiences that are quick, thorough, profitable, and get customers to return and recruit others to your brand. We explore when personalization crosses from convenient to creepy, why "it's digital, just turn it on" stakeholders fundamentally misunderstand product complexity, and the power of creating psychological safety so your QA team feels comfortable sharing game-changing ideas. Key Actionable Takeaways:Balance ease with discovery opportunities - Making reordering too frictionless can train customers into routines that prevent them from discovering new products, hurting both upsell and brand loyalty buildingCreate psychological safety for frontline insights - QA teams and people closest to the product often have the best ideas; build team dynamics where they feel comfortable sharing without fear of being dismissedChallenge "it's digital, just turn it on" stakeholders - Digital initiatives require architecture planning, story pointing, QA test cases, understanding customer needs, and solving actual problems, not just quick implementation of requested featuresWant more tips and strategies about creating frictionless digital experiences? Subscribe to our newsletter! https://www.thefrictionlessexperience.com/frictionless/Download the Five Step Site Speed Target Playbook: http://bluetriangle.com/playbookAdam Candela's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/adamcandela Nick Paladino's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/npaladino Chuck Moxley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckmoxley/Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(01:00) CarPlay upsell problem(02:15) Creepy vs convenient(02:45) Hippo dynamics(03:15) Stakeholder pushback(04:09) Adam's Dunkin role(05:21) Defining frictionless(06:15) Loyalty vs repeat purchase(08:30) CarPlay integration details(11:45) Losing upsell opportunities(14:30) Personalization boundaries(17:00) Location-based notifications(20:15) Android Auto moment(23:45) Tech adoption humility(27:30) Team idea generation(30:00) QA team insights(33:15) Psychological safety(37:00) Hippo self-awareness(38:19) Acronym correction(38:45) Biggest misconception(39:15) Digital should be quick(40:00) Asking why matters(41:15) Solution vs problem(42:24) ConclusionKeywords:Chuck Moxley, Nick Paladino, Adam Candela, The Frictionless Experience, Dunkin Donuts, Inspire Brands, CarPlay integration, mobile ordering, upsell optimization, customer loyalty, personalization limits, location-based marketing, psychological safety, product management, stakeholder management, digital complexity, QA teams, frictionless profitability, customer recruitment,, mobile app strategy, product discovery, 

This OmniTalk Retail Fast Five segment, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, Quorso, and Veloq, looks at BJ's Wholesale Club's experiment with smaller-format stores. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga, joined by A&M's Ken Cochran and Jon Malankar, discuss whether clubs can win quick-trip shopping missions, who should be most concerned, and how this move could reshape regional grocery competition. ⏩ Tune in for the full episode here: https://youtu.be/zqyHBYoL9N4 #BJsWholesale #ClubStores #RetailFormats #GroceryRetail #ConvenienceRetail #RetailStrategy #RegionalGrocers #RetailTrends #OmniTalk

Mastering the "why" behind your audience's actions is the only way to break through the noise in an increasingly automated world. In this episode of Content Amplified, host Benjamin Ard sits down with April Grudier, a seasoned marketing leader with deep roots in both B2C and B2B, to explore the shift from surface-level demographics to belief-level audience insights. April reveals her "scrappy" methods for uncovering what keeps your customers up at night and explains why PR is no longer just "fluff"—it is a critical tool for teaching AI models who your brand is. Inside this episode:Belief vs. Demographics: Why the best content connects with what people value, protect, and prove, rather than just their job title. The Scrappy Researcher's Toolkit: How to find deep audience insights without a massive research department by leveraging sales calls, AI-summarized reviews, and niche media consumption. The Content Filter: A strategic approach to mapping content to the buyer's journey while ensuring every piece serves a clear purpose of awareness, engagement, or conversion. The PR Renaissance: How PR is shaping modern discoverability by feeding the large language models (LLMs) that power AI searches. Structuring for AI: Practical tips for formatting press releases and partner content to ensure your brand surfaces in AI-generated answers. About Our Guest: April Grudier is a versatile marketing leader who transitioned from a background in education to a prolific career in B2C and B2B marketing. Having held nearly every marketing role imaginable at major brands like Staples and BJ's Wholesale Club, she now brings her expertise to the payments industry. She currently serves as a marketing leader at BlueSnap (recently acquired by Payrock), where she focuses on global growth and integrated content strategies. Connect with April:LinkedIn: April Grudier Company Website: PayrocText us what you think about this episode!

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by Grocery Dealz and Mirakl.In today's Retail Daily Minute, Omni Talk's Chris Walton discusses:Amazon discontinues its Amazon One palm recognition system.eBay bans unauthorized AI bots from making automated purchases on its platform.BJ's Wholesale Club opens its second small-format BJ's Market in Delray Beach, Florida.The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights.Be careful out there!

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by Grocery Dealz and Mirakl.In today's Retail Daily Minute, Omni Talk's Chris Walton discusses:Lidl US loses another CEO as Joel Rampoldt exits after less than two years.Klarna launches after-purchase financing through "Swipe to Finance," partnering with Walmart-backed OnePay to let consumers convert completed debit card purchases into installment loans.BJ's Wholesale Club expands in-store digital advertising by deploying Looma interactive screens in wine and liquor aisles across all clubs with alcohol departments.The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights.Be careful out there!

Tsvetta Kaleynska says there's "two different flavored stories" you can find between Costco (COST) and BJ's Wholesale Club (BJ). She attributes Costco to a "theme park for adults" that shows positive retail and sentiment trends, along with a surprising customer taste for high-priced items. However, Tsvetta explains how BJ's shows a greater push for a value-oriented shopper. Tom White takes traders through an example options trade for Costco ahead of next week's earnings. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Options involve risks and are not suitable for all investors. Before trading, read the Options Disclosure Document. http://bit.ly/2v9tH6DSubscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Artificial intelligence is reshaping every corner of the retail landscape, and a new wave of agentic AI shoppers is changing how brands must think about data, experience and customer connection. Debra Langley, partner at CAPTIS Ventures, and Greg Merrill, president at Futura Fragua unpack the rapid rise of AI shopping agents and what this evolution means for the future of retail.(00:00:00) A new era of retail innovation(00:05:02) The rise of AI shopping agents(00:10:08) Explaining AI shoppers to traditional retailers(00:17:06) The promise and peril of AI(00:20:00) Why human experience still mattersThe National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association.Every day, we passionately stand up for the people, policies and ideas that help retail succeed.Resources:• CAPTIS Ventures• Futura Fragua• Get ready for Retail's Big Show in NYC• Become an NRF member and join the world's largest retail trade association• Learn about our retail education platform, NRF Foundation, at nrffoundation.org• Learn about retail advocacy at nrf.com/advocacy• Find more episodes at retailgetsreal.comRelated:• 381: The innovators driving the future of retail• 364: How BJ's Wholesale Club leverages AI to serve its customers

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/DM8Md3GskjY/These step-stools have a safety bar that detach or breaks while in use leading to falls and injuries. The affected models include 11349WHG1E, 11349GRN1E, 11349NVY1E.About 302,000 step stools were sold in the US and an about 11,000 were sold in Canada at Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, and BJ's Wholesale Club stores as well as online at Amazon.com, Wayfair.com, and Overstock.com from February 2021 through July 2025.Stop using the safety bar on the recalled kitchen stepper and store the product away from children until it's repaired. Contact Dorel at 1-888-628-3778 or email the company at recall@coscoproducts.com to obtain a free repair kit that includes a locking mechanism, installation instructions, and a new warning label.https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Dorel-Home-Furnishings-Recalls-Cosco-2-Step-Kitchen-Steppers-Due-to-Fall-and-Injury-Hazards#cosco #steppers #safetybar #falls #injuries #recall

Scott Brown announced campaign for New Hampshire Senator, Tania Fernandes Anderson attends her last Boston City Council meeting, and a deadly shooting overnight near BJ's Wholesale Club in Dedham. Stay in "The Loop" with #iHeartRadio.

Walmart brings in the most Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars. BJ's Wholesale Club plans to open a new store in its home state. And Circana has revealed its 2024 New Product Pacesetters.

In this episode of the Indianness Podcast, we sit down with Anjana Harve, EVP & CIO at BJ's Wholesale Club, to explore the intersection of leadership, innovation, and digital transformation. With a career spanning multiple industries, she shares insights on navigating AI advancements, leading global teams, and fostering an inclusive tech culture.

Details Trust is the foundation of any high-performing team, but in today's fast-paced, uncertain business environment, building and maintaining trust has become more challenging than ever. Research shows that trust isn't just a “nice-to-have”—it's a leadership behavior that impacts everything from team collaboration to overall business performance. So, how can organizations create a culture where … Continued The post Episode 157: Team Trust at BJ's Wholesale Club with Scott Schmadeke first appeared on ZENGER FOLKMAN.

What if creating frictionless digital experiences isn't just about making things easier, but finding the perfect balance between ease and profitability?Join hosts Chuck Moxley and Nick Paladino as they talk with Adam Candela, former Director of Digital Retail and Digital Marketing at Dunkin' Brands. With over 25 years of digital experience including roles at BJ's Wholesale Club and Staples, Adam shares insights on balancing frictionless experiences with business objectives, building effective digital teams, and avoiding the pitfalls of over-automation.Lessons from this episode:1. Balance customer convenience with profitability by maintaining strategic friction points that create opportunities for additional value and sales.2. Encourage innovation within teams by practicing humility as a leader and creating safe spaces for all team members to contribute ideas.3. When implementing digital initiatives, focus first on solving the right problem rather than rushing to quick solutions that might miss the mark with customers.Want more tips and strategies to create frictionless user experiences? Subscribe to our newsletter!https://www.thefrictionlessexperience.com/frictionless—Adam's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcandela/Chuck's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckmoxley/Nick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/npaladino/Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(02:15) Defining Frictionless Digital Experiences(04:45) Challenges of Order-Ahead Technology(07:15) Balancing Convenience with Business Needs(08:45) Location-Based Notifications and Personalization(12:15) Social Engineering in Digital Design(15:45) When Frictionless Hurts Profitability(21:15) Balancing Automation and Personalization(27:00) Internal Friction and Team Dynamics(32:00) Avoiding the "Hippo" Effect in Meetings(35:00) Common Misconceptions About Digital Experiences(38:30) Conclusion

Seven & i pulls the trigger on several "transformational" initiatives, including a 7-Eleven IPO. BJ's Wholesale Club continues to thrive following a strong fourth quarter. And Casey's General Stores has a talking bean-to-cup coffee machine.

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews Gina Iacovone,. 35 year career with BJ's Wholesale Club, a member centric retailer, as the Senior VP of Field Operations. Lead the expansion of the brand into the SE corridor of the US focusing on growing market share through a foundation of operational excellence, member experience and leadership development. Connect with Gina:Website: https://relivehealth.com Connect with Sandee: Website: www.sandeesgarlata.comPodcast: www.happinesssolved.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/coachsandeesgarlataTwitter: www.twitter.com/sandeesgarlataInstagram: www.instagram.com/coachsandeesgarlata

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DF_I2LJPaO-/They are sold under the BJ's Wholesale or the Berkley Jensen and Black Sierra Equipment brands, have security hooks that can crack and break leading to falls and injuries. Affected are seats with date codes 04/2022, 05/2022, and 11/2022.About 22,500 seats were sold at BJ's Wholesale Club and Big 5 Corp stores nationwide as well as online at Amazon.com, from July 2022 through January 2024.Stop using these recalled seats. For a full refund, destroy the seat by cutting through the fabric of the seat and backrest, take a photo of the destroyed seat including your initials and the date, and email the photo to AMX Global at support@stadiumseatrecall.com.  For additional information, call 1-888-439-5139 or email.https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/AMX-Global-Recalls-Portable-Folding-Stadium-Seats-Due-to-Fall-and-Injury-Hazards#amxglobal  #bjs #stadiumseats #cracking #falls #injuries #recalls

The Pooya and Liana Lounge is back to deliver entertaining, humorous conversations about life's trending topics and everyday experiences. This week, Pooya and Liana discuss their origin story, yogurt, Bill Nye, BJ's Wholesale Club, Moo Deng falling off, and so much more! Have questions or comments? Leave them here --> bit.ly/PooyaLianaLounge

Plus: Nvidia shares climb a day after the chipmaker reported strong sales and profits. Shares of BJ's Wholesale Club rise following the bulk retailer raising its earnings outlook. J.R. Whalen reports. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anjana Harve serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer of BJ's Wholesale Club, where she leads technology innovation at the high-frequency club store.  In this episode, Harve joins us to talk about the BJ's member experience, how the company is leveraging AI, her personal career journey and what's on the horizon for tech and retail. (00:00:00) Introductions (00:01:28) Anjana's Career Journey (00:05:45) The Membership Model (00:08:27) How BJ's Is Leveraging AI (00:16:10) Women's Representation In STEM Leadership Roles (00:21:00) What's Next For BJ's? (00:25:04) Anjana's Career Advice (00:26:44) The Exciting Future Of Tech And Retail The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association. Every day, we passionately stand up for the people, policies and ideas that help retail succeed. Resources: • BJ's Wholesale Club • Get ready for Retail's Big Show in NYC • Become an NRF member and join the world's largest retail trade association • Learn about our retail education platform, NRF Foundation, at nrffoundation.org • Learn about retail advocacy at nrf.com/advocacy • Find more episodes at retailgetsreal.com Related: • BJ's Chris Baldwin on what keeps this CEO up at night • NRF Retail Leadership Series: Chris Baldwin, Executive Chairman, BJ's Wholesale Club • Value, partnership and peanut M&M's: BJ's Wholesale Club aligns with Mars Produced by Crate Media.

Anjana Harve serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer of BJ's Wholesale Club, where she leads technology innovation at the high-frequency club store. In this episode, Harve joins us to talk about the BJ's member experience, how the company is leveraging AI, her personal career journey and what's on the horizon for tech and retail.(00:00:00) Introductions(00:01:28) Anjana's Career Journey (00:05:45) The Membership Model (00:08:27) How BJ's Is Leveraging AI(00:16:10) Women's Representation In STEM Leadership Roles (00:21:00) What's Next For BJ's? (00:25:04) Anjana's Career Advice (00:26:44) The Exciting Future Of Tech And RetailThe National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association.Every day, we passionately stand up for the people, policies and ideas that help retail succeed.Resources:• BJ's Wholesale Club• Get ready for Retail's Big Show in NYC• Become an NRF member and join the world's largest retail trade association• Learn about our retail education platform, NRF Foundation, at nrffoundation.org• Learn about retail advocacy at nrf.com/advocacy• Find more episodes at retailgetsreal.comRelated:• BJ's Chris Baldwin on what keeps this CEO up at night• NRF Retail Leadership Series: Chris Baldwin, Executive Chairman, BJ's Wholesale Club• Value, partnership and peanut M&M's: BJ's Wholesale Club aligns with MarsProduced by Crate Media.

Robert Williams has 18 years of experience in retail, with a passion for people leadership at the heart of everything he does. Currently, he serves as a District Manager for Starbucks Coffee Company, where he was promoted to District Manager Trainer within his first year. Throughout his career, Robert has co-created the Happy to Help theme for Sam's Club and Walmart and pioneered the HBCU Retail Leadership Challenge for Target. He's also known for opening new stores and launching company pilots for major retailers, including Sam's Club, Target, BJ's Wholesale Club, and Starbucks.One of his proudest accomplishments is helping over 30 friends, family members, and mentees get promoted, using his ability to authentically connect with the leaders he serves and provide tangible value quickly.On a personal note, Robert made the best decision of his life on August 21, 2021, when he got down on one knee and asked Tiesha to marry him. Now, over two years into marriage, they're building a beautiful life together. They love traveling, especially to Grand Paraiso near Cancun, and enjoy working out at Orange Theory. While both are great in the kitchen, Tiesha holds the title of kitchen master.Robert is also passionate about memorializing his ideas through his collection of books under the title Raw Guidance. His first book, TITO: Turning Interviews to Offers, is expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year and serves as a comprehensive guide to acing interviews. His second book, Keeping Her Excited, focuses on nurturing and strengthening relationships through acts of service.A fan of being read to, Robert's top recommendations include The Gap and The Gain, Black Privilege, and The Power of Vulnerability. At the end of the day, Robert's legacy is about helping others succeed, making his nieces and nephews proud to call him “Unc,” and hearing his wife Tiesha say, “I'm so proud of you” with her beautiful smile.

Chuck Zodda and Mike Armstrong wonder why voters love policies that economists hate. Why do some economists want to pay a gas tax? Comedian John Mulaney brutally roasts SF techies at Dreamforce conference. BJ's Wholesale Club eyes expansion far beyond New England. We get either a 4% mortgage rate or a stable job market.

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C_JPAfMPfVy/ The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the BJ's Wholesale Club are recalling Berkley Jensen branded cedar hard-topped gazebos as their roof panels can fly off in high winds leading to injuries.  Affected are model numbers A102008010, A102008100, A102011920, and A102011902 About 32,500 gazebos were sold at BJ's. Stop using and going near these gazebos until you have obtained free repair kits to secure the roof panels.  For information regarding how to obtain the repair kits, contact BJ's Wholesale Club at 1-800-257-2582 or via email at gazebos@bjs.com. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2024/BJs-Wholesale-Club-Recalls-Berkley-Jensen-Gazebos-Due-to-Injury-Hazard-Recall-Alert #bjswholesale #gazebo #roof #injuries #recall

In episode 99 of The Payments Show Podcast, I spoke to Das Pattathil who is the Co-Founder & Head of Product at Nextuple.Nextuple helps retailers transform their legacy Omnichannel Order Management systems using microservices.VIDEO and PDF Transcript:- click here https://thepaymentsshow.substack.com/p/99 Summary of topics discussed:(00:36) - Guest Introduction: Das and Nextuple(01:03) - Understanding Nextuple's Mission(01:42) - Challenges in Retail Fulfilment(02:12) - Importance of Accurate Delivery Promises(03:56) - Real-World Example: Early Delivery(05:08) - Impact of Precise Delivery Promises(06:12) - Microservices in Order Management(07:40) - Internal Fulfilment Challenges(09:11) - Legacy Systems vs. Microservices(12:45) - Case Study: BJ's Wholesale Club(15:07) - Ideal Customer Profile(16:30) - Retail Challenges: Self Checkouts and Returns(19:59) - Expanding Beyond Retail: B2B and Wholesale(22:42) - Nextuple's Core Philosophy and Community(24:12) - Future Trends in Retail and Fulfilment(30:05) - Conclusion and Final ThoughtsDetails:- Recorded on 18 Jul 2024- Host: Satwant Phull- Guest: Das Pattathil, Co-Founder & Head of Product, NextupleNext Steps:- Nextuple: nextuple.com | @NextupleInc

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C9lHZpfRCGz/ The Consumer Product Safety Commission snd the Atomi company now recall Atomi smart heaters. These heaters tend to turn on without your input leading to fires and burns. About 99,400 were sold in the US and about 10,700 were sold in Canada all at Amazon.com, Ace Hardware, Atomiusa.com, Best Buy, BJ's Wholesale Club, Costco, Hammacher Schlemmer, Home Depot, Lowes and lowes.com, Menards, Sam's Club, and Walmart stores. Immediately stop using these recalled heaters, unplug them, and go to atomicheatererecall.com for instructions regarding receiving a refund.  You will be asked to cut the unit's power cord and upload a photograph of the cut cord and the manufacturer's label to the website in order to receive the refund.For more information, call Atomi at 1-888-770-7140. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2024/Atomi-Recalls-Smart-Heaters-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards #atomi #heater #poweron #fires #burns #recall

Sandy Greenberg is co-founder of Terri & Sandy, an award-winning independent creative agency. She has led the development of iconic work for brands such as The Walt Disney Company, Freshpet, Nutella, and BJ's Wholesale Club. We discussed all of this and more this week on the On Brand podcast. Enjoy This Episode Now Download Episode Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify About Sandy Greenberg After rising through the ranks at DMB&B, JWT, and FCB, Sandy Greenberg founded Terri & Sandy in 2010 with her long-term creative partner, Terri Meyer, with diversity and independence in its DNA. Named Ad Age's Best Small Agency in North America and ranked the EFFIE'S #1 Most Effective Independent Agency in the US, Terri & Sandy services an impressive client roster that includes iconic brands such as The Walt Disney Company, Freshpet, Nutella, and BJ's Wholesale Club. Sandy has been the creative firepower behind some of the most notable campaigns for brands like Oreo, Peeps, Planters, Disney, and Gerber, and her work has permeated popular culture — generating feature stories across Conan, CNN, The View, and more, and winning numerous industry awards including EFFIES, Clio's, and Webby's. From the Show What brand has made Sandy smile recently? “I'm going to share a brand I didn't expect to make me smile — Special K,” Sandy said, noting their recent cereal box featuring pregnant cookbook author Molly Baz. Connect with Terry on LinkedIn and the Terri and Sandy website. As We Wrap … Listen and subscribe at  Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon/Audible, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeart, YouTube, and RSS. Rate and review the show—If you like what you're hearing, be sure to head over to Apple Podcasts and click the 5-star button to rate the show. And, if you have a few extra seconds, write a couple of sentences and submit a review to help others find the show. Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you'd like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show. On Brand is a part of the Marketing Podcast Network. Until next week, I'll see you on the Internet! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Dallas school board approved a roughly $1.9 billion budget Thursday that cuts hundreds of central staff and campus-based positions; Housing costs price families out of neighborhood schools, straining Richardson ISD budget; BJ's Wholesale Club is coming to Texas, land of Costco and Sam's; Traveling NBA and NHL fans will add to the packed flights over Memorial Day weekend Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This report contains an analysis of the latest financial reporting from BJ's Wholesale Club - BJ. The earnings report is for the first quarter of 2024, and the report was shared on an earnings call on May 23, 2024.Company Report & OutlookComp Sales Reporting in Q1 2024 Earnings CallDuring BJ's Wholesale Club's Q1 2024 earnings call, the company reported the following regarding comparable (comp) sales:Comp Sales Growth:* Comparable club sales, excluding gas sales, grew by 0.6% in the first quarter. This performance was noted as particularly significant given the tough comparison to last year's high inflation dynamics.Traffic Contribution:* Strong traffic was a major driver, contributing 3 percentage points to the comp sales in the quarter, maintaining a trend similar to the fourth quarter of the previous year.Inflation and Unit Volume:* Inflation was about flat during the quarter.* There was growth in unit volumes, especially in the perishables, grocery, and sundries divisions.Performance in Perishables, Grocery, and Sundries:* The perishables, grocery, and sundries division experienced comp growth of over 1%.* The strongest growth within this division was in perishables, particularly in unit volumes, led by categories such as fresh produce and dairy.General Merchandise:* The general merchandise segment delivered a slightly negative comp in Q1.* Weather-sensitive categories had a significant impact, with about a 10-point variance in performance across markets with different weather conditions.* Despite these challenges, specific categories like consumer electronics, apparel, and home textiles showed positive comp growth. Home categories, including home textiles, experienced nearly 7% comp growth, turning positive for the first time in a while.Overall, BJ's Wholesale Club highlighted continued momentum and strong comp sales growth, supported by robust traffic, unit growth, and strategic initiatives despite a challenging retail environment.AnalysisCurrent State of BJ's Wholesale ClubMembership and Market Share Growth:* Membership Fees: The company saw robust growth in membership fees by 8.6% year-over-year.* Market Share: Continued growth in market share, particularly in perishables, grocery, and sundries.* Renewal Rate: Exceptionally strong at 90%.* New Memberships: Growth was driven significantly by digital platforms.Sales and Traffic:* Comp Sales: Comparable club sales excluding gas grew by 0.6% in Q1 despite difficult comparisons due to last year's inflation.* Traffic and Unit Growth: Strong traffic trends contributed positively to sales, with a noted increase in unit growth particularly in perishables like fresh produce and dairy.* General Merchandise: Faced challenges due to weather-sensitive categories but reported positive comps in consumer electronics and apparel, with a notable 7% growth in home categories.Digital Engagement:* Digitally Enabled Sales: Continued double-digit growth in digital sales, with a 21% year-over-year increase in digitally enabled comp sales.* Convenience Initiatives: Enhanced digital capabilities like buy online, curbside pickup, and inventory management improvements to further assist shopping convenience.Gasoline Business:* Traffic Driver: Gas promotions and value offerings drove traffic, leading to a 6% growth in comp gallons sold, outpacing the down-trending broader U.S. market.* Profit Margins: Faced margin headwinds in Q1 due to rising costs, but expected to recover in Q2.Financial Performance:* Gross Margins and SG&A: Merchandise gross margin rate slightly decreased. SG&A increased year-over-year due to new openings and strategic investments.* Overall Financial Health: Ended the first quarter with strong inventory management, balancing new unit growth and strategic investments.Future OutlookStrategic Priorities:* Member Loyalty: Focus on increasing the quality and quantity of memberships, with an emphasis on high-spending, high-loyalty segments.* Shopping Experience: Continuous improvement through initiatives like Fresh 2.0 to enhance the quality and selection of fresh produce.* Digital and Convenience: Further development of digital tools to streamline shopping and increase member satisfaction.* Footprint Growth: Aggressive expansion with 11 new clubs expected in H2 of fiscal 2024 in both new and existing markets.Growth Projections:* Comp Sales Guidance: Expect comp sales growth to range between 1%-2% for fiscal 2024 with improved performance in the back half of the year.* Gross Margin Expansion: Anticipates a 20 basis point improvement in merchandise gross margin rate for the year driven by cost management and own-brand growth.* Membership Fee Income: Although Q1 showed high growth, the company expects a moderate but steady increase throughout the year.Industry and Economic Context:* Consumer Sentiment: Acknowledgement of consumer discretion in spending and a focus on high value and essential items.* Competitive Landscape: Awareness of competitive pricing actions but confidence in BJ's intrinsic value proposition and strategic promotional efforts.GuidanceThe leadership team at BJ's Wholesale Club provided the following specific guidance for investors regarding their business:* Comparable Sales: They expect fiscal 2024 comparable sales, excluding gas, to range from 1% to 2%. They anticipate an improving performance as the year progresses, with a particularly strong performance expected in the back half of the year.* Inflation: They are assuming a slightly inflationary year, with a robust consumable business led by traffic, units, and market share.* Membership Fee Income: The company noted that the year-over-year membership fee income increase of 8.6% in the first quarter will probably be the highest growth rate for the year. However, they anticipate it will continue to grow but at a more moderate rate.* Merchandise Gross Margin: They forecast an improvement in the merchandise gross margin rate by approximately 20 basis points for fiscal 2024, driven by strong cost management and continued growth in their own brands.* SG&A: Continued SG&A deleverage is expected as they invest in growth initiatives, particularly in unit growth as new club sales ramp up over a multi-year period. They are also lapping variable compensation tailwinds from fiscal 2023.* Tax Rate: They are planning for an effective tax rate of approximately 28% for the remaining three quarters of the fiscal year.* EPS Guidance: The company continues to expect to deliver adjusted earnings per share (EPS) in the range of $3.75 to $4.00.* Expansion: BJ's plans to open 11 more clubs in the back half of the fiscal year 2024 in both new markets like Louisville, Knoxville, Southern Pines, and Myrtle Beach, as well as existing markets like New York metro and Florida. They also mentioned ongoing investments into their existing footprint with upgrades and remodels.* Gasoline Business: While the first quarter faced margin headwinds due to rising costs, they expect the gasoline business to recover somewhat in the second quarter. They remain confident in the overall profitability and growth potential of this segment on an annual basis.This guidance provided the investors with a clear outlook on how BJ's Wholesale Club expects to perform financially in the coming months and outlined the strategic initiatives they are pursuing to ensure continued growth and return on investment.Change Since Last QuarterComparative Analysis of BJ's Wholesale Club Earnings ReportsThe recent earnings report shows continued growth in membership, digital sales, and market share, with a particular emphasis on digital engagement and convenience improvements. Challenges in general merchandise and gasoline margins were noted, but the outlook remains positive with strategic expansions and new club openings. The previous report emphasized membership growth and long-term value, with concerns about disinflation affecting perishables. Both reports highlight investments in digital capabilities and a steady focus on member loyalty and expanding the company's footprint.Analyst ResponseAnalysisKey Topics from Analysts' Questions* Membership Fee Income (MFI) Growth:* Analyst: Peter Benedict (Baird)* Topic: Why MFI growth is expected to step down after Q1 and whether BJ's leadership is considering increasing membership fees given the strong performance.* Inventory and Merchandising Margins:* Analyst: Peter Benedict (Baird)* Topic: Efforts in getting inventory in line, its progress, and expectations for merchandising margins through the year.* Promotional Environment and Pricing Actions:* Analyst: Kate McShane (Goldman Sachs)* Topic: Current promotional environment and how BJ's is addressing competitive pricing actions to maintain their competitive price gap.* Discrepancy between MFI Growth and Club Growth:* Analyst: Simeon Gutman (Morgan Stanley)* Topic: Drivers behind the high MFI growth and its sustainability, especially with new club openings throughout the year.* New vs. Existing Member Spending:* Analyst: Simeon Gutman (Morgan Stanley)* Topic: Comparison of spending habits across different product categories between new and existing members.* New Market Clubs Performance:* Analyst: Robby Ohmes (Bank of America)* Topic: Performance of new market clubs versus expectations and reasons behind any observed differences.* Fresh 2.0 and Coolers Initiative:* Analyst: Robby Ohmes (Bank of America)* Topic: Details about the Fresh 2.0 initiative and the impact of placing coolers at the front of clubs.* General Merchandise and Seasonal Categories:* Analyst: Chuck Grom (Gordon Haskett)* Topic: Dynamics within the general merchandise segment and the impact of seasonal categories, including services and ancillary products.* Gross Margin Expansion Drivers:* Analyst: Chuck Grom (Gordon Haskett)* Topic: Future drivers of gross margin expansion including inventory management, SKU rationalization, and own brand efforts.* Gasoline Segment Profits:* Analyst: Greg Melich (Evercore ISI)* Topic: Decline in gas profit margins and expectations for improvement.* Impact of Credit Card Transition:* Analyst: Greg Melich (Evercore ISI)* Topic: Effects of last year's credit card transition on current margins, overall sales, and SG&A.* Monthly Sales Trends:* Analyst: Michael Baker (D.A. Davidson)* Topic: Monthly sales trends within the quarter and their relationship to comp expectations throughout the year.* Income Cohort Performance:* Analyst: Edward Kelly (Wells Fargo)* Topic: Performance of different income cohorts, especially the improvement in spending among lower-income members.* Unit Improvement and Own Brands:* Analyst: Chuck Cerankosky (Northcoast Research)* Topic: Unit sales improvement indicating overall club performance and impact of own brand sales on comps and margins.Key ThemesHere are the key terms and phrases used by the BJ's Wholesale Club executives in the earnings call:* Membership fee income (MFI) - This refers to the revenue BJ's earns from membership fees, which is a key driver of their business.* Comparable club sales/comps - This measures the sales growth at stores open for at least 13 months, excluding the impact of gas sales.* Perishables, grocery and sundries - This is a key division of BJ's business focused on food and everyday household items.* General merchandise - This refers to the non-grocery/household items like electronics, apparel, home goods etc.* Fresh 2.0 initiative - This is a program to improve the quality, selection and presentation of BJ's produce offerings.* Own brands (Wellsley Farms, Berkley Jensen) - BJ's private label brands which they are focused on growing as they offer higher margins.* Digitally-enabled sales - Sales driven through online/app ordering and services like curbside pickup.* Merchandise gross margin - The profitability on the merchandise BJ's sells, excluding the gas business.* Strategic priorities - The four key focus areas for BJ's: member loyalty, unbeatable shopping experience, value convenience, and footprint growth.The executives highlighted the company's strong membership growth, gains in market share, improvements in merchandising, and continued investment in digital capabilities as key drivers of their business performance.Financial Reporting Summary* Net Sales: Approximately $4.8 billion, growing 4% over the prior year.* Comparable Club Sales: Up 1.6% year-over-year, led by gallons sold.* Merchandise Comp Sales (excluding gas sales): Increased by 0.6% year-over-year and by 6.3% on a two-year stack.* Digital Sales: Digitally enabled comp sales for the first quarter grew 21% year-over-year and 40% on a two-year stack.* Membership Fee Income (MFI): Grew 8.6% to approximately $111.4 million.* Gross Margins:* Merchandise gross margin rate (excluding gasoline) decreased by approximately 50 basis points year-over-year.* Expected merchandise gross margin rate improvement of approximately 20 basis points for fiscal 2024.* SG&A Expenses: Approximately $721.8 million, with a year-over-year increase attributed to new unit growth and other investments.* Adjusted EBITDA: $236.4 million for the first quarter.* Effective Tax Rate: 24.4% for the quarter.* Adjusted Earnings Per Share (EPS): $0.85, flat year-over-year.* Inventory: Ended the first quarter with inventory about flat year-over-year.* Net Leverage: Ended the first quarter with 0.6 turns of net leverage.* Share Repurchases: 405,000 shares for $30.2 million, with $159 million remaining under the current authorization.* Guidance for Fiscal Year 2024:* Comp sales, excluding gas, expected to range from 1% to 2%.* Merchandise gross margin rate expected to improve by approximately 20 basis points.* Effective tax rate of approximately 28% for the remaining three quarters of the fiscal year.* Adjusted EPS expected in the $3.75 to $4 range. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theearningscall.substack.com

Doug Weich, the Founder and CEO of Sophelle and Connecter for the Retail AI Council, and Shirley Gao, the Chief Digital and Information Officer of PacSun and member of the Executive Leadership Committee of the Retail AI Council, add their page to the Marketing Playbook. Hear how to embrace AI (Artificial Intelligence), follow your passions, watch out for shiny object syndrome, Doug's family ties to BJ's Wholesale Club, and Shirley's favorite use cases for AI. Connect with Doug and Shirley on LinkedIn and at RetailAiCouncil.com

864: In many cases, companies develop systems with a primary focus on efficiency and begin to address their impacts on the customer late in the process. At BJ's Wholesale Club, CIO Anjana Harve looks to flip this around with the customer experience in mind at the beginning and end of the process. In this episode of Technovation, Anjana joins Peter in a discussion on improving the digital customer experience at BJ's Wholesale, optimizing revenue, and boosting efficiency. With extensive experience as a CIO in the healthcare industry, Anjana brings a unique perspective to the retail sector, focusing on customer centricity and the application of technology to serve and improve the member experience at BJ's. She delves into her strategy for a member-centric architecture that provides a 360-degree view of the customer and fosters hyper-personalization at scale. Finally, Anjana shares her perspective on how companies can uplift and support women in tech, the trends and intersections in technology she keeps her eye on, and the secrets to her continued career success.

864: In many cases, companies develop systems with a primary focus on efficiency and begin to address their impacts on the customer late in the process. At BJ's Wholesale Club, CIO Anjana Harve looks to flip this around with the customer experience in mind at the beginning and end of the process. In this episode of Technovation, Anjana joins Peter in a discussion on improving the digital customer experience at BJ's Wholesale, optimizing revenue, and boosting efficiency. With extensive experience as a CIO in the healthcare industry, Anjana brings a unique perspective to the retail sector, focusing on customer centricity and the application of technology to serve and improve the member experience at BJ's. She delves into her strategy for a member-centric architecture that provides a 360-degree view of the customer and fosters hyper-personalization at scale. Finally, Anjana shares her perspective on how companies can uplift and support women in tech, the trends and intersections in technology she keeps her eye on, and the secrets to her continued career success.

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C5YlICgrzWP/ The Consumer Product Safety Commission and BJ's Wholesale Club now recall Berkley Jensen Citronella 72-inch Tiki Torches.  The top of the torch tends to break open or fall off while lit leading to burns. About 90,000 of these tiki torches were sold at BJ's. Stop lighting and using these tiki torches.  Empty the fuel reservoirs and return the torches to BJ's for a full refund. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2024/BJs-Wholesale-Club-Recalls-Berkley-Jensen-Citronella-72-inch-Tiki-Torches-Due-to-Burn-Hazard #tiki #torch #bjs #burns #recall

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, where we unveil today's top headlines reshaping the retail landscape.In today's headlines:Trader Joe's adjusts its iconic banana prices for the first time in over 20 years, raising individual banana prices to 23 cents.Academy Sports + Outdoors announces plans to open 160 to 180 new stores over the next five years.BJ's Wholesale Club expands its footprint with a dozen new club openings across the Southeast and Midwest regions.GameStop implements job cuts as part of its cost-reduction efforts following declines in fourth-quarter and full-year sales.Stay tuned for more transformative developments in the retail industry, brought to you daily by Omni Talk. Be careful out there!

In der heutigen Folge von „Alles auf Aktien“ sprechen die Finanzjournalisten Daniel Eckert und Holger Zschäpitz über die drei Kaufideen der besten Analysten, den wohl teuersten Satz von Apple-Boss Tim Cook und eine Schmähkritik am Highflyern Super Micro Computer. Außerdem geht es um Rheinmetall, Vonovia, Crowdstrike, Nike, BJ's Wholesale Club, Hertz, Nvidia, Yandex, Sixt, Volkswagen, Porsche AG, Continental, Mercedes-Benz Group, BASF, BMW, Allianz, Commerzbank, Airbus, Deutsche Bank, Continental, Daimler Truck, DHL, Münchener Rück, Beiersdorf, VanEck's Semiconductor ETF (WKN: A2QC5J), Wisdomtree Copper ETC (WKN: A0KRKR), WisdomTree Copper 3x Daily Leveraged (WKN: A1VBKQ), Global X Copper Miners ETF (WKN: A3C7FZ), Lunding, Ivanhoe, Antofagasta, Southern Copper, Freeport McMoRan, Glencore, BHP, Aurubis, MMG Limited. Wir freuen uns an Feedback über aaa@welt.de. Ab sofort gibt es noch mehr "Alles auf Aktien" bei WELTplus und Apple Podcasts – inklusive aller Artikel der Hosts und AAA-Newsletter. Hier bei WELT: https://www.welt.de/podcasts/alles-auf-aktien/plus247399208/Boersen-Podcast-AAA-Bonus-Folgen-Jede-Woche-noch-mehr-Antworten-auf-Eure-Boersen-Fragen.html. Disclaimer: Die im Podcast besprochenen Aktien und Fonds stellen keine spezifischen Kauf- oder Anlage-Empfehlungen dar. Die Moderatoren und der Verlag haften nicht für etwaige Verluste, die aufgrund der Umsetzung der Gedanken oder Ideen entstehen. Hörtipps: Für alle, die noch mehr wissen wollen: Holger Zschäpitz können Sie jede Woche im Finanz- und Wirtschaftspodcast "Deffner&Zschäpitz" hören. Außerdem bei WELT: Im werktäglichen Podcast „Das bringt der Tag“ geben wir Ihnen im Gespräch mit WELT-Experten die wichtigsten Hintergrundinformationen zu einem politischen Top-Thema des Tages. +++ Werbung +++ Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte! https://linktr.ee/alles_auf_aktien Impressum: https://www.welt.de/services/article7893735/Impressum.html Datenschutz: https://www.welt.de/services/article157550705/Datenschutzerklaerung-WELT-DIGITAL.html

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C2If9Y-rqjA/ The CPSC and Homedics are recalling Homedics Therapist Select Percussion Personal Massagers due to overheating while charging and risks of fire and burn hazards. About 46,000 of these percussion massagers were sold in the US and about 41,000 were sold in Canada at Macy's, BJ's Wholesale Club, Lowe's, JCPenney, The Home Depot and other stores nationwide and online at Homedics.com, Macys.com, BJs.com, Lowes.com, HomeDepot.com and Amazon.com. Immediately stop charging and using these massagers and contact Homedics at 1-800-466-3342 to determine if your massager is included in the recall and to arrange a refund or a product credit. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2024/Homedics-Recalls-Massagers-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards #homedics #massager #overheating #burns #fire #recall

BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. recently conducted their Earnings Call, during which CEO Bob Eddy affirmed the company's dedication to long-term value. Eddy underscored a myriad of encouraging performance markers, such as membership growth, amplified traffic, market share expansion, and steady unit trends all noticed in the recent financial period. With a focus on longevity, these factors are perceived by the company leadership to contribute positively to the corporation. Nevertheless, Eddy also brought up an area of concern in the form of climbing disinflation affecting perishable food products. The company had anticipated this trend and foresees that it may persist, leading to unpredictability and potential volatility in pricing. Eddy, alongside this, reassured investors that the company remains steadfast in its commitment to value provision and member support. The company's priorities include boosting member loyalty, providing an unmatched shopping experience, digital business growth, and market footprint enlargement. The strategies to realize these goals involve investment in pricing strategies, proprietary brands, and digital features aimed at facilitating convenience and personalized member experiences. In regard to future plans, the company is set to inaugurate five more clubs within the next quarter. This action will bring the number of newly introduced clubs for the current financial year to nine. Furthermore, BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. is willing to invest in automation, enhancing the general merchandise sector, and continuation of innovation to drive growth and optimize shareholder returns. In summary, as claimed on the company's earnings call, BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. is prepared to address potential obstacles while profiting from market growth opportunities. BJ Company info: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BJ/profile For more PSFK research : www.psfk.com  This email has been published and shared for the purpose of business research and is not intended as investment advice.

BJs Wholesale Club's Q3 2023 earnings call, unedited

One convenience store retailer has received an investment to fuel its expansion. Sales were flat during the recent quarter at BJ's Wholesale Club. And the FDA is investigating whether shipments of cinnamon have been contaminated with lead.

We cover a couple of interesting local disputes on this week's Access Louisville podcast.First off, Reporter Michael L. Jones tells us about a copyright infringement lawsuit involving the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels and the Kentucky Colonels International. The HOKC won a judgement against the KCI but it looks like an appeal is in the works.After that we talk about a bankruptcy case for Louisville restaurant chain Green District. And after that, we talk about the closure of the Fern Valley Strike and Spare, which comes after a land sale but not without a bit of social media discord.After that we switch gears and talk a possible IPO by Louisville health tech firm Waystar. And we go over a few restaurant and retail stories involving a new taco joint — Bakersfield coming to the Highlands; and a new retailer, BJ's Wholesale Club, coming to Jefferson Mall.Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more. 

In this episode, we will explore the different wholesale options available on Shopify. Whether you're a seasoned wholesaler or just starting out, Shopify can be a powerful tool for your business. We'll discuss three main options for using Shopify for wholesale, including creating discount codes for your retail site, using an app like Wholesale Club, or setting up a separate wholesale store. We'll dive into the pros and cons of each method, considering factors like customer experience, cost, and the need for additional apps.In this episode, we will cover:- The three main wholesale options on Shopify- Pros and cons of each option- Considerations for customer experience and cost- The host's guest interview on Wholesaleinabox.com- A positive review of the DIY Shopify courseThank you for joining us on Product Powerhouse. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast for more actionable strategies to supercharge your product-based business. And remember, you're not alone in this journey - we're here to help you become a true product powerhouse. Support the showCONNECT WITH ERIN ALEXANDER: UNFILTERED - New subscriber only podcast for $3/month Facebook Community Instagram YouTube DIY Shopify Course Product Powerhouse Website

Tyler Sperry is an experienced e-commerce specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the retail and publishing industries. As the Director of E-commerce and Affiliates at America's Test Kitchen, he oversees the presentation of products across e-commerce, physical retail, and third-party distribution. Tyler is skilled in procurement, merchandising, social media, online marketing, and project management. He previously worked as a Buyer for BJ's Wholesale Club and as a Sales and Events Manager at KarmaLoop. In this episode… Are you an e-commerce company considering a change to your commerce platform? It's essential to weigh your options and pick one that fits your needs. Selecting the right e-commerce platform can be tricky. Not only is it difficult to know which is best, but it is hard to know if it will stay that way. Companies change over time, and some platforms lack the flexibility to adapt alongside your business. Adobe Commerce is a popular option, but it may not be perfect for every shop. So what are some of the key advantages and limitations of the platform? On this episode of the Ecommerce Wizards Podcast, Guillaume Le Tual talks with Tyler Sperry, the Director of E-commerce and Affiliates for America's Test Kitchen, to discuss his experience with Adobe Commerce. Tyler touches on the company's first platform, why they changed to Adobe, and some of their experiences with it. They also offer advice to those considering making a transition. 

Earlier this season, we talked with positive leadership expert Kim Cameron, and purpose-driven leadership expert Bob Quinn, both from the University of Michigan. This week on the podcast, we're talking to a guest who lives and breathes these values as a business leader.   Erin Mara is the Vice President of Talent Management at BJ's Wholesale Club, a $17 billion per year retailer, where she oversees learning and talent development for 35,000 people. Before that, she spent 19 years at Staples, ultimately becoming their Senior Director of Learning and Development.   And importantly, she's also a mother to a daughter. We talk about how being a positive and purpose-driven leader can help navigate the world of business and parenthood. Learn more about Udemy Business at https://bit.ly/udemy-podcast.

About ChetanChetan Venkatesh is a technology startup veteran focused on distributed data, edge computing, and software products for enterprises and developers. He has 20 years of experience in building primary data storage, databases, and data replication products. Chetan holds a dozen patents in the area of distributed computing and data storage.Chetan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Macrometa – a Global Data Network featuring a Global Data Mesh, Edge Compute, and In-Region Data Protection. Macrometa helps enterprise developers build real-time apps and APIs in minutes – not months.Links Referenced: Macrometa: https://www.macrometa.com Macrometa Developer Week: https://www.macrometa.com/developer-week TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built in key rotation permissions is code connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. tail scales. Completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Managing shards. Maintenance windows. Overprovisioning. ElastiCache bills. I know, I know. It's a spooky season and you're already shaking. It's time for caching to be simpler. Momento Serverless Cache lets you forget the backend to focus on good code and great user experiences. With true autoscaling and a pay-per-use pricing model, it makes caching easy. No matter your cloud provider, get going for free at gomomento.co/screaming That's GO M-O-M-E-N-T-O dot co slash screamingCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Today, this promoted guest episode is brought to us basically so I can ask a question that has been eating at me for a little while. That question is, what is the edge? Because I have a lot of cynical sarcastic answers to it, but that doesn't really help understanding. My guest today is Chetan Venkatesh, CEO and co-founder at Macrometa. Chetan, thank you for joining me.Chetan: It's my pleasure, Corey. You're one of my heroes. I think I've told you this before, so I am absolutely delighted to be here.Corey: Well, thank you. We all need people to sit on the curb and clap as we go by and feel like giant frauds in the process. So let's start with the easy question that sets up the rest of it. Namely, what is Macrometa, and what puts you in a position to be able to speak at all, let alone authoritatively, on what the edge might be?Chetan: I'll answer the second part of your question first, which is, you know, what gives me the authority to even talk about this? Well, for one, I've been trying to solve the same problem for 20 years now, which is build distributed systems that work really fast and can answer questions about data in milliseconds. And my journey's sort of been like the spiral staircase journey, you know, I keep going around in circles, but the view just keeps getting better every time I do one of these things. So I'm on my fourth startup doing distributed data infrastructure, and this time really focused on trying to provide a platform that's the antithesis of the cloud. It's kind of like taking the cloud and flipping it on its head because instead of having a single region application where all your stuff runs in one place, on us-west-1 or us-east-1, what if your apps could run everywhere, like, they could run in hundreds and hundreds of cities around the world, much closer to where your users and devices and most importantly, where interesting things in the real world are happening?And so we started Macrometa about five years back to build a new kind of distributed cloud—let's call the edge—that kind of looks like a CDN, a Content Delivery Network, but really brings very sophisticated platform-level primitives for developers to build applications in a distributed way around primitives for compute, primitives for data, but also some very interesting things that you just can't do in the cloud anymore. So that's Macrometa. And we're doing something with edge computing, which is a big buzzword these days, but I'm sure you'll ask me about that.Corey: It seems to be. Generally speaking, when I look around and companies are talking about edge, it feels almost like it is a redefining of what they already do to use a term that is currently trending and deep in the hype world.Chetan: Yeah. You know, I think humans just being biologically social beings just tend to be herd-like, and so when we see a new trend, we like to slap it on everything we have. We did that 15 years back with cloud, if you remember, you know? Everybody was very busy trying to stick the cloud label on everything that was on-prem. Edge is sort of having that edge-washing moment right now.But I define edge very specifically is very different from the cloud. You know, where the cloud is defined by centralization, i.e., you've got a giant hyperscale data center somewhere far, far away, where typically electricity, real estate, and those things are reasonably cheap, i.e., not in urban centers, where those things tend to be expensive.You know, you have platforms where you run things at scale, it's sort of a your mess for less business in the cloud and somebody else manages that for you. The edge is actually defined by location. And there are three types of edges. The first edge is the CDN edge, which is historically where we've been trying to make things faster with the internet and make the internet scale. So Akamai came about, about 20 years back and created this thing called the CDN that allowed the web to scale. And that was the first killer app for edge, actually. So that's the first location that defines the edge where a lot of the peering happens between different network providers and the on-ramp around the cloud happens.The second edge is the telecom edge. That's actually right next to you in terms of, you know, the logical network topology because every time you do something on your computer, it goes through that telecom layer. And now we have the ability to actually run web services, applications, data, directly from that telecom layer.And then the third edge is—sort of, people have been familiar with this for 30 years. The third edge is your device, just your mobile phone. It's your internet gateway and, you know, things that you carry around in your pocket or sit on your desk, where you have some compute power, but it's very restricted and it only deals with things that are interesting or important to you as a person, not in a broad range. So those are sort of the three things. And it's not the cloud. And these three things are now becoming important as a place for you to build and run enterprise apps.Corey: Something that I think is often overlooked here—and this is sort of a natural consequence of the cloud's own success and the joy that we live in a system that we do where companies are required to always grow and expand and find new markets—historically, for example, when I went to AWS re:Invent, which is a cloud service carnival in the desert that no one in the right mind should ever want to attend but somehow we keep doing, it used to be that, oh, these announcements are generally all aligned with people like me, where I have specific problems and they look a lot like what they're talking about on stage. And now they're talking about things that, from that perspective, seem like Looney Tunes. Like, I'm trying to build Twitter for Pets or something close to it, and I don't understand why there's so much talk about things like industrial IoT and, “Machine learning,” quote-unquote, and other things that just do not seem to align with. I'm trying to build a web service, like it says on the name of a company; what gives?And part of that, I think, is that it's difficult to remember, for most of us—especially me—that what they're coming out with is not your shopping list. Every service is for someone, not every service is for everyone, so figuring out what it is that they're talking about and what those workloads look like, is something that I think is getting lost in translation. And in our defense—collective defense—Amazon is not the best at telling stories to realize that, oh, this is not me they're talking to; I'm going to opt out of this particular thing. You figure it out by getting it wrong first. Does that align with how you see the market going?Chetan: I think so. You know, I think of Amazon Web Services, or even Google, or Azure as sort of Costco and, you know, Sam's Wholesale Club or whatever, right? They cater to a very broad audience and they sell a lot of stuff in bulk and cheap. And you know, so it's sort of a lowest common denominator type of a model. And so emerging applications, and especially emerging needs that enterprises have, don't necessarily get solved in the cloud. You've got to go and build up yourself on sort of the crude primitives that they provide.So okay, go use your bare basic EC2, your S3, and build your own edgy, or whatever, you know, cutting edge thing you want to build over there. And if enough people are doing it, I'm sure Amazon and Google start to pay interest and you know, develop something that makes it easier. So you know, I agree with you, they're not the best at this sort of a thing. The edge is phenomenon also that's orthogonally, and diametrically opposite to the architecture of the cloud and the economics of the cloud.And we do centralization in the cloud in a big way. Everything is in one place; we make giant piles of data in one database or data warehouse slice and dice it, and almost all our computer science is great at doing things in a centralized way. But when you take data and chop it into 50 copies and keep it in 50 different places on Earth, and you have this thing called the internet or the wide area network in the middle, trying to keep all those copies in sync is a nightmare. So you start to deal with some very basic computer science problems like distributed state and how do you build applications that have a consistent view of that distributed state? So you know, there have been attempts to solve these problems for 15, 18 years, but none of those attempts have really cracked the intersection of three things: a way for programmers to do this in a way that doesn't blow their heads with complexity, a way to do this cheaply and effectively enough where you can build real-world applications that serve billions of users concurrently at a cost point that actually is economical and make sense, and third, a way to do this with adequate levels of performance where you don't die waiting for the spinning wheel on your screen to go away.So these are the three problems with edge. And as I said, you know, me and my team, we've been focused on this for a very long while. And me and my co-founder have come from this world and we created a platform very uniquely designed to solve these three problems, the problems of complexity for programmers to build in a distributed environment like this where data sits in hundreds of places around the world and you need a consistent view of that data, being able to operate and modify and replicate that data with consistency guarantees, and then a third one, being able to do that, at high levels of performance, which translates to what we call ultra-low latency, which is human perception. The threshold of human perception, visually, is about 70 milliseconds. Our finest athletes, the best Esports players are about 70 to 80 milliseconds in their twitch, in their ability to twitch when something happens on the screen. The average human is about 100 to 110 milliseconds.So in a second, we can maybe do seven things at rapid rates. You know, that's how fast our brain can process it. Anything that falls below 100 milliseconds—especially if it falls into 50 to 70 milliseconds—appears instantaneous to the human mind and we experience it as magic. And so where edge computing and where my platform comes in is that it literally puts data and applications within 50 milliseconds of 90% of humans and devices on Earth and allows now a whole new set of applications where latency and location and the ability to control those things with really fine-grained capability matters. And we can talk a little more about what those apps are in a bit.Corey: And I think that's probably an interesting place to dive into at the moment because whenever we talk about the idea of new ways of building things that are aimed at decentralization, first, people at this point automatically have a bit of an aversion to, “Wait, are you talking about some of the Web3 nonsense?” It's one of those look around the poker table and see if you can spot the sucker, and if you can't, it's you. Because there are interesting aspects to that entire market, let's be clear, but it also seems to be occluded by so much of the grift and nonsense and spam and the rest that, again, sort of characterize the early internet as well. The idea though, of decentralizing out of the cloud is deeply compelling just to anyone who's really ever had to deal with the egress charges, or even the data transfer charges inside of one of the cloud providers. The counterpoint is it feels that historically, you either get to pay the tax and go all-in on a cloud provider and get all the higher-level niceties, or otherwise, you wind up deciding you're going to have to more or less go back to physical data centers, give or take, and other than the very baseline primitives that you get to work with of VMs and block storage and maybe a load balancer, you're building it all yourself from scratch. It seems like you're positioning this as setting up for a third option. I'd be very interested to hear it.Chetan: Yeah. And a quick comment on decentralization: good; not so sure about the Web3 pieces around it. We tend to talk about computer science and not the ideology of distributing data. There are political reasons, there are ideological reasons around data and sovereignty and individual human rights, and things like that. There are people far smarter than me who should explain that.I fall personally into the Nicholas Weaver school of skepticism about Web3 and blockchain and those types of things. And for readers who are not familiar with Nicholas Weaver, please go online. He teaches at UC Berkeley is just one of the finest minds of our time. And I think he's broken down some very good reasons why we should be skeptical about, sort of, Web3 and, you know, things like that. Anyway, that's a digression.Coming back to what we're talking about, yes, it is a new paradigm, but that's the challenge, which is I don't want to introduce a new paradigm. I want to provide a continuum. So what we've built is a platform that looks and feels very much like Lambdas, and a poly-model database. I hate the word multi. It's a pretty dumb word, so I've started to substitute ‘multi' with ‘poly' everywhere, wherever I can find it.So it's not multi-cloud; it's poly-cloud. And it's not multi-model; it's poly-model. Because what we want is a world where developers have the ability to use the best paradigm for solving problems. And it turns out when we build applications that deal with data, data doesn't just come in one form, it comes in many different forms, it's polymorphic, and so you need a data platform, that's also, you know, polyglot and poly-model to be able to handle that. So that's one part of the problem, which is, you know, we're trying to provide a platform that provides continuity by looking like a key-value store like Redis. It looks like a document database—Corey: Or the best database in the world Route 53 TXT records. But please, keep going.Chetan: Well, we've got that too, so [laugh] you know? And then we've got a streaming graph engine built into it that kind of looks and behaves like a graph database, like Neo4j, for example. And, you know, it's got columnar capabilities as well. So it's sort of a really interesting data platform that is not open-source; it's proprietary because it's designed to solve these problems of being able to distribute data, put it in hundreds of locations, keep it all in sync, but it looks like a conventional NoSQL database. And it speaks PostgreSQL, so if you know PostgreSQL, you can program it, you know, pretty easily.What it's also doing is taking away the responsibility for engineers and developers to understand how to deal with very arcane problems like conflict resolution in data. I made a change in Mumbai; you made a change in Tokyo; who wins? Our systems in the cloud—you know, DynamoDB, and things like that—they have very crude answers for this something called last writer wins. We've done a lot of work to build a protocol that brings you ACID-like consistency in these types of problems and makes it easy to reason with state change when you've got an application that's potentially running in 100 locations and each of those places is modifying the same record, for example.And then the second part of it is it's a converged platform. So it doesn't just provide data; it provides a compute layer that's deeply integrated directly with the data layer itself. So think of it as Lambdas running, like, stored procedures inside the database. That's really what it is. We've built a very, very specialized compute engine that exposes containers in functions as stored procedures directly on the database.And so they run inside the context of the database and so you can build apps in Python, Go, your favorite language; it compiles down into a [unintelligible 00:15:02] kernel that actually runs inside the database among all these different polyglot interfaces that we have. And the third thing that we do is we provide an ability for you to have very fine-grained control on your data. Because today, data's become a political tool; it's become something that nation-states care a lot about.Corey: Oh, do they ever.Chetan: Exactly. And [unintelligible 00:15:24] regulated. So here's the problem. You're an enterprise architect and your application is going to be consumed in 15 countries, there are 13 different frameworks to deal with. What do you do? Well, you spin up 13 different versions, one for each country, and you know, build 13 different teams, and have 13 zero-day attacks and all that kind of craziness, right?Well, data protection is actually one of the most important parts of the edge because, with something like Macrometa, you can build an app once, and we'll provide all the necessary localization for any region processing, data protection with things like tokenization of data so you can exfiltrate data securely without violating potentially PII sensitive data exfiltration laws within countries, things like that, i.e. It's solving some really hard problems by providing an opinionated platform that does these three things. And I'll summarize it as thus, Corey, we can kind of dig into each piece. Our platform is called the Global Data Network. It's not a global database; it's a global data network. It looks like a frickin database, but it's actually a global network available in 175 cities around the world.Corey: The challenge, of course, is where does the data actually live at rest, and—this is why people care about—well, they're two reasons people care about that; one is the data residency locality stuff, which has always, honestly for me, felt a little bit like a bit of a cloud provider shakedown. Yeah, build a data center here or you don't get any of the business of anything that falls under our regulation. The other is, what is the egress cost of that look like? Because yeah, I can build a whole multicenter data store on top of AWS, for example, but minimum, we're talking two cents, a gigabyte of transfer, even with inside of a region in some cases, and many times that externally.Chetan: Yeah, that's the real shakedown: the egress costs [laugh] more than the other example that you talked about over there. But it's a reality of how cloud pricing works and things like that. What we have built is a network that is completely independent of the cloud providers. We're built on top of five different service providers. Some of them are cloud providers, some of them are telecom providers, some of them are CDNs.And so we're building our global data network on top of routes and capacity provided by transfer providers who have different economics than the cloud providers do. So our cost for egress falls somewhere between two and five cents, for example, depending on which edge locations, which countries, and things that you're going to use over there. We've got a pretty generous egress fee where, you know, for certain thresholds, there's no egress charge at all, but over certain thresholds, we start to charge between two to five cents. But even if you were to take it at the higher end of that spectrum, five cents per gigabyte for transfer, the amount of value our platform brings in architecture and reduction in complexity and the ability to build apps that are frankly, mind-boggling—one of my customers is a SaaS company in marketing that uses us to inject offers while people are on their website, you know, browsing. Literally, you hit their website, you do a few things, and then boom, there's a customized offer for them.In banking that's used, for example, you know, you're making your minimum payments on your credit card, but you have a good payment history and you've got a decent credit score, well, let's give you an offer to give you a short-term loan, for example. So those types of new applications, you know, are really at this intersection where you need low latency, you need in-region processing, and you also need to comply with data regulation. So when you building a high-value revenue-generating app like that egress cost, even at five cents, right, tends to be very, very cheap, and the smallest part of you know, the complexity of building them.Corey: One of the things that I think we see a lot of is that the tone of this industry is set by the big players, and they have done a reasonable job, by and large, of making anything that isn't running in their blessed environments, let me be direct, sound kind of shitty, where it's like, “Oh, do you want to be smart and run things in AWS?”—or GCP? Or Azure, I guess—“Or do you want to be foolish and try and build it yourself out of popsicle sticks and twine?” And, yeah, on some level, if I'm trying to treat everything like it's AWS and run a crappy analog version of DynamoDB, for example, I'm not going to have a great experience, but if I also start from a perspective of not using things that are higher up the stack offerings, that experience starts to look a lot more reasonable as we start expanding out. But it still does present to a lot of us as well, we're just going to run things in VM somewhere and treat them just like we did back in 2005. What's changed in that perspective?Chetan: Yeah, you know, I can't talk for others but for us, we provide a high-level Platform-as-a-Service, and that platform, the global data network, has three pieces to it. First piece is—and none of this will translate into anything that AWS or GCP has because this is the edge, Corey, is completely different, right? So the global data network that we have is composed of three technology components. The first one is something that we call the global data mesh. And this is Pub/Sub and event processing on steroids. We have the ability to connect data sources across all kinds of boundaries; you've got some data in Germany and you've got some data in New York. How do you put these things together and get them streaming so that you can start to do interesting things with correlating this data, for example?And you might have to get across not just physical boundaries, like, they're sitting in different systems in different data centers; they might be logical boundaries, like, hey, I need to collaborate with data from my supply chain partner and we need to be able to do something that's dynamic in real-time, you know, to solve a business problem. So the global data mesh is a way to very quickly connect data wherever it might be in legacy systems, in flat files, in streaming databases, in data warehouses, what have you—you know, we have 500-plus types of connectors—but most importantly, it's not just getting the data streaming, it's then turning it into an API and making that data fungible. Because the minute you put an API on it and it's become fungible now that data is actually got a lot of value. And so the data mesh is a way to very quickly connect things up and put an API on it. And that API can now be consumed by front-ends, it can be consumed by other microservices, things like that.Which brings me to the second piece, which is edge compute. So we've built a compute runtime that is Docker compatible, so it runs containers, it's also Lambda compatible, so it runs functions. Let me rephrase that; it's not Lambda-compatible, it's Lambda-like. So no, you can't take your Lambda and dump it on us and it won't just work. You have to do some things to make it work on us.Corey: But so many of those things are so deeply integrated to the ecosystem that they're operating within, and—Chetan: Yeah.Corey: That, on the one hand, is presented by cloud providers as, “Oh, yes. This shows how wonderful these things are.” In practice, talk to customers. “Yeah, we're using it as spackle between the different cloud services that don't talk to one another despite being made by the same company.”Chetan: [laugh] right.Corey: It's fun.Chetan: Yeah. So the second edge compute piece, which allows you now to build microservices that are stateful, i.e., they have data that they interact with locally, and schedule them along with the data on our network of 175 regions around the world. So you can build distributed applications now.Now, your microservice back-end for your banking application or for your HR SaaS application or e-commerce application is not running in us-east-1 and Virginia; it's running literally in 15, 18, 25 cities where your end-users are, potentially. And to take an industrial IoT case, for example, you might be ingesting data from the electricity grid in 15, 18 different cities around the world; you can do all of that locally now. So that's what the edge functions does, it flips the cloud model around because instead of sending data to where the compute is in the cloud, you're actually bringing compute to where the data is originating, or the data is being consumed, such as through a mobile app. So that's the second piece.And the third piece is global data protection, which is hey, now I've got a distributed infrastructure; how do I comply with all the different privacy and regulatory frameworks that are out there? How do I keep data secure in each region? How do I potentially share data between regions in such a way that, you know, I don't break the model of compliance globally and create a billion-dollar headache for my CIO and CEO and CFO, you know? So that's the third piece of capabilities that this provides.All of this is presented as a set of serverless APIs. So you simply plug these APIs into your existing applications. Some of your applications work great in the cloud. Maybe there are just parts of that app that should be on our edge. And that's usually where most customers start; they take a single web service or two that's not doing so great in the cloud because it's too far away; it has data sensitivity, location sensitivity, time sensitivity, and so they use us as a way to just deal with that on the edge.And there are other applications where it's completely what I call edge native, i.e., no dependancy on the cloud comes and runs completely distributed across our network and consumes primarily the edges infrastructure, and just maybe send some data back on the cloud for long-term storage or long-term analytics.Corey: And ingest does remain free. The long-term analytics, of course, means that once that data is there, good luck convincing a customer to move it because that gets really expensive.Chetan: Exactly, exactly. It's a speciation—as I like to say—of the cloud, into a fast tier where interactions happen, i.e., the edge. So systems of record are still in the cloud; we still have our transactional systems over there, our databases, data warehouses.And those are great for historical types of data, as you just mentioned, but for things that are operational in nature, that are interactive in nature, where you really need to deal with them because they're time-sensitive, they're depleting value in seconds or milliseconds, they're location sensitive, there's a lot of noise in the data and you need to get to just those bits of data that actually matter, throw the rest away, for example—which is what you do with a lot of telemetry in cybersecurity, for example, right—those are all the things that require a new kind of a platform, not a system of record, a system of interaction, and that's what the global data network is, the GDN. And these three primitives, the data mesh, Edge compute, and data protection, are the way that our APIs are shaped to help our enterprise customers solve these problems. So put it another way, imagine ten years from now what DynamoDB and global tables with a really fast Lambda and Kinesis with actually Event Processing built directly into Kinesis might be like. That's Macrometa today, available in 175 cities.Corey: This episode is brought to us in part by our friends at Datadog. Datadog is a SaaS monitoring and security platform that enables full-stack observability for modern infrastructure and applications at every scale. Datadog enables teams to see everything: dashboarding, alerting, application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, UX monitoring, security monitoring, dog logos, and log management, in one tightly integrated platform. With 600-plus out-of-the-box integrations with technologies including all major cloud providers, databases, and web servers, Datadog allows you to aggregate all your data into one platform for seamless correlation, allowing teams to troubleshoot and collaborate together in one place, preventing downtime and enhancing performance and reliability. Get started with a free 14-day trial by visiting datadoghq.com/screaminginthecloud, and get a free t-shirt after installing the agent.Corey: I think it's also worth pointing out that it's easy for me to fall into a trap that I wonder if some of our listeners do as well, which is, I live in, basically, downtown San Francisco. I have gigabit internet connectivity here, to the point where when it goes out, it is suspicious and more a little bit frightening because my ISP—Sonic.net—is amazing and deserves every bit of praise that you never hear any ISP ever get. But when I travel, it's a very different experience. When I go to oh, I don't know, the conference center at re:Invent last year and find that the internet is patchy at best, or downtown San Francisco on Verizon today, I discover that the internet is almost non-existent, and suddenly applications that I had grown accustomed to just working suddenly didn't.And there's a lot more people who live far away from these data center regions and tier one backbones directly to same than don't. So I think that there's a lot of mistaken ideas around exactly what the lower bandwidth experience of the internet is today. And that is something that feels inadvertently classist if that make sense. Are these geographically bigoted?Chetan: Yeah. No, I think those two points are very well articulated. I wish I could articulate it that well. But yes, if you can afford 5G, some of those things get better. But again, 5G is not everywhere yet. It will be, but 5G can in many ways democratize at least one part of it, which is provide an overlap network at the edge, where if you left home and you switched networks, on to a wireless, you can still get the same quality of service that you used to getting from Sonic, for example. So I think it can solve some of those things in the future. But the second part of it—what did you call it? What bigoted?Corey: Geographically bigoted. And again, that's maybe a bit of a strong term, but it's easy to forget that you can't get around the speed of light. I would say that the most poignant example of that I had was when I was—in the before times—giving a keynote in Australia. So ah, I know what I'll do, I'll spin up an EC2 instance for development purposes—because that's how I do my development—in Australia. And then I would just pay my provider for cellular access for my iPad and that was great.And I found the internet was slow as molasses for everything I did. Like, how do people even live here? Well, turns out that my provider would backhaul traffic to the United States. So to log into my session, I would wind up having to connect with a local provider, backhaul to the US, then connect back out from there to Australia across the entire Pacific Ocean, talk to the server, get the response, would follow that return path. It's yeah, turns out that doing laps around the world is not the most efficient way of transferring any data whatsoever, let alone in sizable amounts.Chetan: And that's why we decided to call our platform the global data network, Corey. In fact, it's really built inside of sort of a very simple reason is that we have our own network underneath all of this and we stop this whole ping-pong effect of data going around and help create deterministic guarantees around latency, around location, around performance. We're trying to democratize latency and these types of problems in a way that programmers shouldn't have to worry about all this stuff. You write your code, you push publish, it runs on a network, and it all gets there with a guarantee that 95% of all your requests will happen within 50 milliseconds round-trip time, from any device, you know, in these population centers around the world.So yeah, it's a big deal. It's sort of one of our je ne sais quoi pieces in our mission and charter, which is to just democratize latency and access, and sort of get away from this geographical nonsense of, you know, how networks work and it will dynamically switch topology and just make everything slow, you know, very non-deterministic way.Corey: One last topic that I want to ask you about—because I near certain given your position, you will have an opinion on this—what's your take on, I guess, the carbon footprint of clouds these days? Because a lot of people been talking about it; there has been a lot of noise made about, justifiably so. I'm curious to get your take.Chetan: Yeah, you know, it feels like we're in the '30s and the '40s of the carbon movement when it comes to clouds today, right? Maybe there's some early awareness of the problem, but you know, frankly, there's very little we can do than just sort of put a wet finger in the air, compute some carbon offset and plant some trees. I think these are good building blocks; they're not necessarily the best ways to solve this problem, ultimately. But one of the things I care deeply about and you know, my company cares a lot about is helping make developers more aware off what kind of carbon footprint their code tangibly has on the environment. And so we've started two things inside the company. We've started a foundation that we call the Carbon Conscious Computing Consortium—the four C's. We're going to announce that publicly next year, we're going to invite folks to come and join us and be a part of it.The second thing that we're doing is we're building a completely open-source, carbon-conscious computing platform that is built on real data that we're collecting about, to start with, how Macrometa's platform emits carbon in response to different types of things you build on it. So for example, you wrote a query that hits our database and queries, you know, I don't know, 20 billion objects inside of our database. It'll tell you exactly how many micrograms or how many milligrams of carbon—it's an estimate; not exactly. I got to learn to throttle myself down. It's an estimate, you know, you can't really measure these things exactly because the cost of carbon is different in different places, you know, there are different technologies, et cetera.Gives you a good decent estimate, something that reliably tells you, “Hey, you know that query that you have over there, that piece of SQL? That's probably going to do this much of micrograms of carbon at this scale.” You know, if this query was called a million times every hour, this is how much it costs. A million times a day, this is how much it costs and things like that. But the most important thing that I feel passionate about is that when we give developers visibility, they do good things.I mean, when we give them good debugging tools, the code gets better, the code gets faster, the code gets more efficient. And Corey, you're in the business of helping people save money, when we give them good visibility into how much their code costs to run, they make the code more efficient. So we're doing the same thing with carbon, we know there's a cost to run your code, whether it's a function, a container, a query, what have you, every operation has a carbon cost. And we're on a mission to measure that and provide accurate tooling directly in our platform so that along with your debug lines, right, where you've got all these print statements that are spitting up stuff about what's happening there, we can also print out, you know, what did it cost in carbon.And you can set budgets. You can basically say, “Hey, I want my application to consume this much of carbon.” And down the road, we'll have AI and ML models that will help us optimize your code to be able to fit within those carbon budgets. For example. I'm not a big fan of planting—you know, I love planting trees, but don't get me wrong, we live in California and those trees get burned down.And I was reading this heartbreaking story about how we returned back into the atmosphere a giant amount of carbon because the forest reserve that had been planted, you know, that was capturing carbon, you know, essentially got burned down in a forest fire. So, you know, we're trying to just basically say, let's try and reduce the amount of carbon, you know, that we can potentially create by having better tooling.Corey: That would be amazing, and I think it also requires something that I guess acts almost as an exchange where there's a centralized voice that can make sure that, well, one, the provider is being honest, and two, being able to ensure you're doing an apples-to-apples comparison and not just discounting a whole lot of negative externalities. Because, yes, we're talking about carbon released into the environment. Okay, great. What about water effects from what's happening with your data centers are located? That can have significant climate impact as well. It's about trying to avoid the picking and choosing. It's hard, hard problem, but I'm unconvinced that there's anything more critical in the entire ecosystem right now to worry about.Chetan: So as a startup, we care very deeply about starting with the carbon part. And I agree, Corey, it's a multi-dimensional problem; there's lots of tentacles. The hydrocarbon industry goes very deeply into all parts of our lives. I'm a startup, what do I know? I can't solve all of those things, but I wanted to start with the philosophy that if we provide developers with the right tooling, they'll have the right incentives then to write better code. And as we open-source more of what we learn and, you know, our tooling, others will do the same. And I think in ten years, we might have better answers. But someone's got to start somewhere, and this is where we'd like to start.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking as much time as you have for going through what you're up to and how you view the world. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Chetan: Yes, so two things on that front. Go to www.macrometa.com—M-A-C-R-O-M-E-T-A dot com—and that's our website. And you can come and experience the full power of the platform. We've got a playground where you can come, open an account and build anything you want for free, and you can try and learn. You just can't run it in production because we've got a giant network, as I said, of 175 cities around the world. But there are tiers available for you to purchase and build and run apps. Like I think about 80 different customers, some of the biggest ones in the world, some of the biggest telecom customers, retail, E-Tail customers, [unintelligible 00:34:28] tiny startups are building some interesting things on.And the second thing I want to talk about is November 7th through 11th of 2022, just a couple of weeks—or maybe by the time this recording comes out, a week from now—is developer week at Macrometa. And we're going to be announcing some really interesting new capabilities, some new features like real-time complex event processing with low, ultra-low latency, data connectors, a search feature that allows you to build search directly on top of your applications without needing to spin up a giant Elastic Cloud Search cluster, or providing search locally and regionally so that, you know, you can have search running in 25 cities that are instant to search rather than sending all your search requests back in one location. There's all kinds of very cool things happening over there.And we're also announcing a partnership with the original, the OG of the edge, one of the largest, most impressive, interesting CDN players that has become a partner for us as well. And then we're also announcing some very interesting experimental work where you as a developer can build apps directly on the 5G telecom cloud as well. And then you'll hear from some interesting companies that are building apps that are edge-native, that are impossible to build in the cloud because they take advantage of these three things that we talked about: geography, latency, and data protection in some very, very powerful ways. So you'll hear actual customer case studies from real customers in the flesh, not anonymous BS, no marchitecture. It's a week-long of technical talk by developers, for developers. And so, you know, come and join the fun and let's learn all about the edge together, and let's go build something together that's impossible to do today.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:36:06]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Chetan: My pleasure, Corey. Like I said, you're one of my heroes. I've always loved your work. The Snark-as-a-Service is a trillion-dollar market cap company. If you're ever interested in taking that public, I know some investors that I'd happily put you in touch with. But—Corey: Sadly, so many of those investors lack senses of humor.Chetan: [laugh]. That is true. That is true [laugh].Corey: [laugh]. [sigh].Chetan: Well, thank you. Thanks again for having me.Corey: Thank you. Chetan Venkatesh, CEO and co-founder at Macrometa. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry and insulting comment about why we should build everything on the cloud provider that you work for and then the attempt to challenge Chetan for the title of Edgelord.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is issuing a public health alert for Perdue's frozen ready-to-eat (RTE) chicken breast tenders “gluten free” that may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically small pieces of clear plastic and blue dye. Products affected: 42 oz. plastic bags containing “PERDUE CHICKEN BREAST TENDERS GLUTEN FREE” with a “Best if Used By: 07 12 23” and a lot number of 2193 above the use by date.The products bear establishment number “P-33944” immediately below the “Best if Used By:” date on the back of the plastic bag. These items were shipped to BJ's Wholesale Club retail locations nationwide.Read the full alert here Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

First-time jobless claims hit 218,000 last week. BJ's Wholesale Club reports earnings. Plus, Under Armour's CEO will step down. Host: Shaina Mishkin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wholesale retailers, such as BJ's, proved crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did the pandemic attract customers, but it also necessitated the hiring of new employees and the need to retain current ones. Mark Griffin, Chief Human Resources Officer of BJ's Wholesale Club, discusses the ways in which the company retains and grows its employee base and maintains customer loyalty. Griffin also discusses how the company prioritizes the safety, health, and well-being of its workers and customers. Some Questions Asked:How was BJ's able to support employees and serve the public at the beginning of the pandemic? (4:31)BJ's recently acquired the assets and operations of four distribution centers. From an HR standpoint, how do you prepare for merging operations? (10:20)To what extent does BJ's invest in its employee culture? (13:22)In This Episode, You Will Learn:How BJ's retains its employees through cultivating an environment of belonging.About actively listening and initiating change around employees' needs.How BJ's plans to transition their employees from remote to a hybrid work environment with new, progressive offices.Links:Mark Griffin - BJ's company profileMark Griffin - LinkedInBJ's Wholesale Club - LinkedInMichelle Labbe - LinkedInThe Talent Economy podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Supermarkets are increasingly becoming testing grounds for some of the latest technology. At Walmart’s subsidiary, Sam’s Club, customers can use an app to scan and pay for items while in the grocery aisle. Last month, Walmart sued BJ's Wholesale Club, alleging the company infringed on patents for its Scan and Go technology. As checkout tech gets more advanced, it’s getting more competitive. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Don Apgar, merchant practice director at Mercator Advisory Group, about innovations in the space.

Supermarkets are increasingly becoming testing grounds for some of the latest technology. At Walmart’s subsidiary, Sam’s Club, customers can use an app to scan and pay for items while in the grocery aisle. Last month, Walmart sued BJ's Wholesale Club, alleging the company infringed on patents for its Scan and Go technology. As checkout tech gets more advanced, it’s getting more competitive. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Don Apgar, merchant practice director at Mercator Advisory Group, about innovations in the space.